The Comet

Reviews / Votes

The Comet gets started with a bang - the discovery of highly classified documents hidden in the back of an old desk - and never lets up until the final page. This is a grand, sweeping, compulsively readable yarn, a spy story, a war story, and a love story. The depth of Ed Caesar's research is matched only by the artistry of his writing, the way he draws us back into a time when courage was a more common virtue, and a clandestine cell of passionate young allies risked everything for a righteous cause. A rousing, rollicking, entirely thrilling book -- PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, author of SAY NOTHING Dedee's story is one of limitless courage. In Ed Caesar's dramatic and moving telling, it is also a nuanced study of moral purpose, of love and loss, and the work that gives life meaning -- SOPHIE ELMHIRST, author of MAURICE AND MARALYN The Comet is an extraordinary feat of narrative non-fiction; it is richly complex and profoundly moving. With clarity, style and sensitivity, Ed Caesar has crafted an unforgettable story of youthful heroism, of passion and sacrifice. I read it with pleasure, fascination, and unreserved admiration -- MARK O'CONNELL, author of A THREAD OF VIOLENCE Absolute, selfless bravery of the kind shown by the Belgian resistance fighter Andree De Jongh is a great human mystery, and it takes a storyteller of Ed Caesar's masterly, mesmerising powers to unravel it. Dedee, as she was known, stands at the center of a novelistic cast of characters who move through the shadows of Nazi-occupied Europe, working sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, sometimes for both in turn. At once a brilliant feat of detective work and a narrative tour-de-force, The Comet is destined to become a primary document of resistance history -- ALEX ROSS, author of THE REST IS NOISE and WAGNERISM