Fifty-four

Front Cover
Arrow, 2006 - Fiction - 549 pages

The year: 1954, the height of the Cold War.

The world is divided into East and West.

In Naples, mafioso Lucky Luciano and his Mafia minions are busy fixing horse-races, and overseeing the creation of the global heroin trade. In Hollywood, some members of Her Majesty's Secret Service have a dangerous mission for the supremely elegant actor Cary Grant. And in Bologna, Pierre Capponi, a lovelorn young barman, is about to embark on a painful odyssey in search of his missing father, one that will end up taking him half-way around the world.

And bringing together all these strands and more is a missing television set, a McGuffin Electric, an appliance with a very special secret...

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About the author (2006)

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.