What is the truth? In this blistering story of a ghost writer haunted by his demonic subject, the Man Booker Prize winner turns to lies, crime and literature with devastating effect

A young and penniless writer, Kif Kehlmann, is rung in the middle of the night by the notorious con man and corporate criminal, Siegfried Heidl. About to go to trial for defrauding the banks of $700 million, Heidl proposes a deal- $10,000 for Kehlmann to ghost write his memoir in six weeks.

But as the writing gets under way, Kehlmann begins to fear that he is being corrupted by Heidl. As the deadline draws closer, he becomes ever more unsure if he is ghost writing a memoir, or if Heidl is rewriting him-his life, his future. Everything that was certain grows uncertain as he begins to wonder- who is Siegfried Heidl-and who is Kif Kehlmann?

By turns compelling, comic, and chilling, First Person is a haunting journey into the heart of our age.

‘Powerful, funny, disturbing, moving . . . Flanagan candidly and honestly confronts the raw truths of the writing life and the family life, material and spiritual poverty, love and despair and desire . . . He touches on genuine brilliance.’ – The Australian

‘A triumph . . . This is a book of demonic possession, of obsession, and there’s a zinger of thought, of expression, in every paragraph. First Person is a parable for the age of Trump’ – Phillip Adams, The Weekend Australian Magazine

‘Flanagan’s most artfully constructed and thematically complex novel to date.’ – Australian Book Review

Richard Flanagan’s novels have received numerous honours and are published in forty-two countries. He won the Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North and the Commonwealth Prize for Gould’s Book of Fish. A rapid on the Franklin River is named after him.