ABOUT
THE BOOK

The Blind Assassin spans the decades between the First World War and the present.
Iris Chase, married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and eighty-two, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by her once-prosperous family before the First World War. While coping with her now unreliable body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, leading up to the events surrounding her sister Laura’s tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin, a novel that earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety, but also a devoted cult following. It describes a risky affair in the turbulent thirties between a wealthy young woman and a left-leaning man on the run. During their secret meetings in rented rooms and seedy cafes, the lovers concoct a pulp fantasy set on the planet Zycron. As the invented story twists through love and sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real one: while events in both move closer to war and catastrophe.