Why am I passionate about this?
I have always been interested in politics, and when I was more naive, I believed politics was essential to protect ordinary people. Over time, however, you lose that innocence and begin to understand that, on the contrary, politics is often a means of controlling us and has few scruples about the lives it destroys.
My other great passion is literature. When you bring those two passions together and realize that the world is not quite as you have been told, you begin to feel a moral duty to tell that story, and to tell it as well as possible so that it can reach as many readers as possible.
W.'s book list on political spy thrillers where shadow powers change the world
Why W. loves this book
I read The Day of the Jackal when I was very young, then I saw the original film, and later I read the book again.
It fascinates me because of the precision with which it is written and because of two ideas that have been essential to my own career as a writer: how a terrorist group, by commissioning the assassination of De Gaulle, could have changed history with a single bullet had the attempt succeeded, and how politics becomes intertwined with violence and terrorism, showing that they are ultimately inseparable and that one cannot exist without the other.
15 authors picked The Day of the Jackal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
The Day of the Jackal is the electrifying story of the struggle to catch a killer before it's too late.
It is 1963 and an anonymous Englishman has been hired by the Operations Chief of the O.A.S. to murder General De Gaulle. A failed attempt in the previous year means the target will be nearly impossible to get to. But this latest plot involves a lethal weapon: an assassin of legendary talent.
Known only as The Jackal, this remorseless and deadly killer must be stopped, but how do you track a man who exists in name alone?
