The Great and Calamitous Tale of Johan Thoms

The Great and Calamitous Tale of Johan Thoms
Ian Thornton

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.

Copyright (#u7ed8f596-2d8b-5a88-a3c0-7e9cc48a785d)

The Friday Project An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

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This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2013

Copyright © Ian Thornton 2013

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013

Ian Thornton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

FIRST EDITION

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007551491

Ebook Edition © NOV 2013 ISBN: 9780007551507

Version: 2015-09-08

To Heather, Laszlo and Clementine

Contents

Cover (#u0cb6d950-c57f-53c1-bf2e-671f41b6bf78)

Title Page (#uf00daeec-750a-52f6-be3b-a8538b1925f4)

Copyright

Dedication (#u9aeb322b-998d-56ae-bbd8-30afb9c6d874)

Prologue:

A Refracted Tale of Two Wordy Old Gentlemen in a Blue Prism (#uba12864f-8228-573a-9495-11f0f2b667da)

Part One

1 Around the Time When Adolf Was a Glint in His First Cousin’s Eye

2 Pawn to Queen Four

3 Serendipity’s Day Off

4 The Butterflies Flutter By

Part Two

1 Fools Rush In

2 A Vision of Love (Wearing Boxing Gloves)

3 Drago Thoms: Pythagoras, Madness, and an Indian Summer in Bed

4 The Kama Sutra, Ganika, and Russian Vampires

5 We Are the Music Makers. We Are the Dreamers of Dreams.

6 A Sweet Deity of Debauchery

7 A Day (or So) in the Country

8 Just a Lucky Man Who Made the Grade

9 The Accusative Case

10 The Black Hand

11 The Day Abu Hasan Broke Wind

12 A Microcosm of the Apocalypse

13 A Farewell of Scarlet Wax and Gardenia

Part Three

1 And the Ass Saw the Angel

2 It Only Hurts When I Laugh (Part I)

3 The Die Is Cast (aka Les Jeux Sont Faits)

4 The Unlikely Bedfellow

5 “Ciao Bello!”

6 The March of Don Quixote