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The Wooden King Audiobook
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Czechoslovakia, 1939. Snow is falling over the city when the Nazis invade. Before the ice on the roads has a chance to melt, everything has changed for the country—and for Viktor Trn.
It isn’t obvious at first. The day-to-day realities of occupation take time to sink in. After losing his job as a history professor, Trn remains optimistic, preserving what little he can of his family’s dwindling freedom. In his family’s small apartment, the radio brings worsening news as Europe surrenders to Germany. Friends are arrested, men are hanged in the local school. Trn must protect his young son, but he understands leaving their homeland could prove too dangerous.
In the spirit of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, The Wooden King explores denial, desire, and family drama against the lyrically rendered backdrop of World War II, deftly navigating “the simple difference between what we do and what we ought to do” in the face of rising totalitarianism.
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“The Wooden King serves as a sober reminder of the perils of complacency and inaction in the face of injustice and oppression. Thomas McConnell has given us a powerful and important book.”
— Joseph Kertes, author of The Afterlife of Stars
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“Thomas McConnell vividly renders the dark ironies of history, but readers will encounter compassion, decency, and courage also. What an excellent debut!”
— Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author -
“McConnell’s first novel is imbued with rich historical detail, believably renders one man’s struggle between pacifism and protecting his family.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“McConnell shines in re-creating the stifled life of Czechs under the Occupation. Despite Viktor’s faults, he’s a sympathetic and well-delineated character.”
— Library Journal -
“[A] moving, fast-paced tale of a man caught in in the world’s most tragic cataclysm. Read it and, like the history it lays bare, you won’t forget it.”
— Peter Golden, author of Wherever There Is Light
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About Thomas McConnell
Thomas McConnell’s work has appeared in the Connecticut Review, the Cortland Review, and Shenandoah, among other publications. He has received the South Carolina Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship, the Hackney National Literary Award for the Short Story, and his story collection A Picture Book of Hell and Other Landscapes was published by Texas Tech University Press. He teaches English at the University of South Carolina Upstate.
About Stefan Rudnicki
Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.