Strindberg's Star

'Breathtaking...Strindberg's Star brilliantly evokes the mysterious worlds of Jules Verne, interwoven with the pulse-pounding, techno-thrillers of James Bond' Katherine Neville, bestselling author of The Eight China, 1895 In the shifting sands of the Taklimakan Desert, a new Pompeii has come to light and, with it, two remarkable artefacts - a metal ankh and star, covered in strange inscriptions. The Arctic, 1897 A hydrogen balloon is readied for a polar voyage. Publicly, it is a patriotic attempt to put Sweden in the lead of the race to the North Pole. Privately, the three men on board are committed to another, much more dangerous mission...Sweden, 2011 260 meters under the earth, in a long-flooded mineshaft, a diver's torchbeam plays over a corpse with a fist-sized hole in its forehead. Skeletal fingers clutch a metal amulet. It is the key to the annals of a secret history so deeply buried that the few who knew of it thought it lost forever. Until now...

Jan Wallentin is a journalist. He is forty-one years old and has three children. He lives in Stockholm and is currently working on his next book. This is his first novel.

Rachel Willson-Broyles has translated Invasion and Montecore, both by Jonas Hassan Khemiri. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.