First published in 1939 on the eve of World War II, Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male tells the story of a British sportsman who sets out to stalk an unnamed European dictator. A thinly veiled killing-Hitler fantasy, the book is a remarkable artifact for all the ways it fails to mean what contemporary readers might expect. History’s judgment is suspended, providing no easy index for presumptive good and evil which so often allows for the portrayal of cathartic violence against enemy soldiers in post-war treatment of the subject.

Instead, we have a wish: to put an end to fascism through the annihilation of its leader. Murder and killing play out on the small scale. What begins as a struggle of an individual operating within his own moral context morphs into a page-churning thriller as creeping fascism reaches into the depths of the English countryside. A masterpiece of intensity and suspense at the intersection of reason and animal impulse.

Perfect for: Anyone ready to go down the psychological warren of motivation, desire, and survival in the pages of a classic thriller.

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