The Great and Calamitous Tale of Johan Thoms - Softcover

‘Echoes of Gabriel García Márquez. Read it slowly and savor it’ – KIRKUS (Starred Review)

‘What Thornton manages to do is take one tiny player in a monumental event and focus in on Johan Thoms with the careful research of an historian and the deft touch and aplomb of a true literary artist’
– THE HUFFINGTON POST

‘A dazzling and utterly engrossing epic with an enormous beating heart’
– ANGELA JACKSON, author of ‘The Emergence of Judy Taylor’

‘A wonderful brilliant book’
– LEWIS DeSOTO, author of ‘A Blade of Grass’

‘Poignant as hell, addictive like opium, a wonderful, weird, oddball circus-like tale. It is a masterpiece’ - THE WALRUS

Johan Thoms (pronounced Yo-han Tomes) was born in Argona, a small town twenty-three miles south of Sarajevo, during the hellish depths of winter 1894.

Little did he know that his inability to reverse a car would change the course of 20th Century History forever...

Johan Thoms is poised for greatness. A promising student at the University of Sarajevo, he is young, brilliant, and in love with the beautiful Lorelei Ribeiro. He can outwit chess masters, quote the Kama Sutra, and converse with dukes and drunkards alike. But he cannot drive a car in reverse. And as with so much in the life of Johan Thoms, this seemingly insignificant detail will prove to be much more than it appears. On the morning of June 28, 1914, Johan takes his place as the chauffeur to Franz Ferdinand and the royal entourage and, with one wrong turn, he forever alters the course of history.