Molly-Mae: Behind It All - Part 2
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54 Hardcover – 5 May 2005

4.6 out of 5 stars 22 ratings

The new novel by the authors of Q. As extraordinary and bizarre a Cold War thriller as that book was a historical novel. The year is 1954, the height of the Cold War. The world is divided into East and West. In Naples, Lucky Luciano and his minions are busy fixing horse-races, and overseeing the creation of the global heroin trade. In Hollywood, members of Her Majesty's Secret Service have a bizarre and dangerous mission for Cary Grant. And in Bologna,, a lovelorn young barman, is about to embark on a painful odyssey in search of his missing father. Bringing together all these strands and more is a missing television set, a McGuffin Electric, an appliance with a very special secret...At once a political thriller and a touching romance, 54 has a cast ranging from Italian partisans to KGB agents, from American Mafiosi to Parisian lowlifes, and features appearances by Alfred Hitchcock, Marshal Tito and the Emperor of Indochina. Wu Ming - the collective formerly known as Luther Blissett - have produced another tour-de-force that paints a dazzling picture of a past age while slyly commenting on our own.
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Product description

Review

Praise for "Q": "Big and bloody and breathtaking: a crush of colour and crowds, exotic locations and war." --"The Times" "If ever there was a novel that deserved to win prizes, accolades and plaudits, it is Q . . . A rich, inventive and immensely powerful book . . . Q is a great novel, one that tells us about ourselves and how we came to be here." --"Scotland on Sunday" "As a historical blockbuster, it boasts pace, colour, excitement and suspense to spare...Q works like a charm as a sordid, splendid period romp." --"Independent" "The air is full of blistering debate, revolutionary preaching and the smell of smoke, both from burning icons in the churches and the pyre on which the heretics are burned . . . A sprawlng epic." --"Guardian"

About the Author

Wu Ming means 'no name' - and therefore 'anonymous' - in Mandarin Chinese. The five members of the Wu Ming Foundation live in Bologna. Writing as Luther Blissett, their first novel, Q, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Heinemann Ltd; First Edition (5 May 2005)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 550 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0434012939
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0434012930
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.26 x 4.37 x 24.59 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 22 ratings

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Ming Wu
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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
22 global ratings

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 September 2017
    V good
  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 January 2024
    The writers of the Wu Ming cooperative are usually rather boring, with an excessively ideological approach to history. This novel is THE shining exception. It tells the story of three communists from Bologna (Vittorio Capponi and his two sons): two of them are politically serious but frustratred by the events of 1954; the third one loves dancing, women and Cary Grant. The authors manage to have a well-balanced view of events, and it is difficult to put down the book
  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 August 2006
    Cary Grant's assignment by MI6 to play the role of Yugoslav leader Marshall Tito in a film biography is just one of the plot lines in this jam-packed novel, filled with subplots from its 1954 setting. The west is trying to form closer ties with Tito, while the Soviets, with whom he has already broken, are acting to prevent this. Many Italian partisans fought on the Yugoslav front during World War II and have remained there, supported by friends and family in Bologna as they engage in the smuggling of oil into Trieste. As members of the local communist party, these Bolognese supporters are trying to control the future of "Italian" Trieste. In Naples, Salvatore Lucania ("Lucky Luciano"), recently deported from the US, works at controlling the world's drug trade.

    As these plots develop simultaneously, the reader must keep track of dozens of characters and their activities, since the various plots do not overlap until the end. Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, David Niven, Grace Kelly, and the James Bond novels all play parts in Grant's story. The Naples story, with Luciano, involves all the on-going crimes of this don and his henchmen--drugs, race-fixing, gambling, prostitution. The Bologna plot is far more domestic, with a young man searching for his father, who is in Trieste, and a love story involving a married woman who takes care of her mentally ill brother. Minor threads involve the McCarthy hearings, Emperor Bao Dai from Vietnam, Nikita Krushchev, and even Fidel Castro.

    Wu Ming, the "author," is actually a collective of five Italian writers (four of whom, known as "Luther Blissett," wrote the Reformation novel, Q). While this device allows for enormous creativity, the accumulation of vast amounts of period detail, and the introduction of more characters than I can recall in one novel in a long time, the novel suffers from a looseness in construction and a lack of control. The grand finale, while worthy of James Bond, is actually anticlimactic as the various plots come together more than five hundred pages after they began.

    Filled with local color--bars, casinos, races, card games, and political movements--the novel is often lively and fun to read. The points of view and location change every few pages, however, and the reader often feels as if s/he is reading four separate novels simultaneously. Humor and irony pervade the novel, including sections written from the point of view of a TV set, a scheme to make a Madonna weep, and a satiric view of an FBI agent. There's a lot of everything in this novel! One wishes its authors had subjected it to more vigorous pruning. Mary Whipple
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 August 2005
    '54 is a great literary thriller, in the vein of Umbert Eco. If you liked In The Name of the Rose, you'll love this. The four standds of the story are all excellent individual and work well and interlink succesfully as a whole. The chapters on Cary Grant in particular are excellent - they capture the man well and are written with wit and authenticity. The book features a dazzling array of charaters, from Mafiosi to Hitcock. Highly recommended.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 February 2010
    Q was a marvelous book. It conveyed ideas that could hardly have been put forward in any other way. It uses the reformation as an analogy for a modern political and socialogical struggle and succeeds brilliantly. This is surely the point of the wu ming collective.

    54 does not achieve what it sets out to. It retains the thiller-esque style of the authors' debut but does not stike the same pertinent chords and so remains little less than a mediocre thriller. Admittedly, the characters are excellently drawn and it is funny in parts, but I don't think this is enough. I suspect this book remains unique, but I was looking for something else, the something which made Q great and Wu ming stand out as a collective of authors besides being just that, a collective. I just don't think it was there.

    I hope Wu Ming's new book Manituana, is a great as Q, certainly the content seems more apt for a politically motivated novel, but 54 dissappointed me.
    2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • trevornewland
    5.0 out of 5 stars Original
    Reviewed in Canada on 30 December 2021
    These fellows are always original with their premises and storylines.
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on 11 October 2017
    Great book!
  • W. Chen
    4.0 out of 5 stars A wild ride
    Reviewed in the United States on 5 July 2008
    An intricate storyline set mostly in Italy in the year 1954, in the midst of the cold war. Most characters are associated with the communists to one degree or another. With a mixture of true people and historical events, it gives the readers a strong sense of time and places. Friendship, love, crime, adventure, ideology, international intrigue, and politics all intertwined into a complex web.

    The first hundred pages are not easy read as various plotlines start almost disjointedly. Too many characters to follow without any hint of who are the important ones. But after that, pieces start to fall into places, and wow, what a ride to the very end.
  • Robert Bonacolta
    4.0 out of 5 stars ... background in the history the book talks about but great volume.
    Reviewed in the United States on 15 January 2015
    It helps to have a background in the history the book talks about but great volume.