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‘THE GHOSTS OF Rome’ by Joseph O’Connor has been named the An Post Irish Book of the Year for 2025.
The book was among six titles competing for the accolade, all of which were category winners at the recent 2025 An Post Irish Book Awards – O’Connor’s book had scooped The Last Word Listeners’ Choice Award.
The six books were chosen on the principle that they secured the highest number of votes during the shortlist voting process across all categories.
The Ghosts of Rome is the second in O’Connor’s Escape Line Trilogy and went straight to Number One in the Irish bestseller chart after only three days on sale.
The historical fiction novel remained in the overall Irish Top Ten for five weeks and in the Irish Paperback Top Ten for sixteen weeks.
The first novel in the trilogy, My Father’s House, was also an Irish Number One bestseller and has now sold more than 150,000 copies in English.
My Father’s House is based on the story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who helped save more than 6,000 Allied prisoners of war, anti-Fascists, and Jews from Nazi concentration and prisoner-of-war camps.
O’Connor is currently working on the next novel in the trilogy, which is expected to be published in early 2027.
The Ghosts of Rome is set six months after Nazi forces occupied Rome and follows a group called ‘The Choir’, whose mission is to smuggle refugees to safety and help Allied soldiers.
O’Connor is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright and broadcaster from Dublin and the author of eleven novels.
His work has also been translated into forty languages.
O’Connor has also worked with many musicians, including Paul Brady and The Chieftains, and has performed spoken-word pieces at major venues including the National Concert Hall and the Royal Albert Hall.
The winner of the An Post Irish Book of the Year award was decided by a judging panel that was chaired by Paul Howard, an author, screenwriter, and newspaper columnist best known as the creator of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly.
Joining him on the panel was Madeleine Keane, Cyril McGrane, Sinéad McCorry, and Sara Keating.
Howard remarked that choosing a Book of the Year “was the toughest of tough tasks” and that each of the six books were “outstanding in their own class”.
“As one of the judges said, ‘It’s like comparing the best film you ever saw with the best piece of music you ever heard.’”
He said it took close to four hours to decide upon a winner and that there were “at least two strong advocates for every book on the list”.
“I think every single one of the six was at some point in prime position,” said Howard.
“Most of us changed our minds several times in the room.”
Howard described The Ghosts of Rome as a “beautiful piece of writing, as well as a thrilling piece of historical fiction”.
“In dealing with the theme of good people standing up to the evils of Fascism, it has strong resonance for the times in which we are living.”
The announcement was made at tonight’s ceremony, which was broadcast on RTÉ One.
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