Walking into the Night
by Olaf Olafsson
Pantheon Books, 2003

(From the publisher) From the author of The Journey Home, a new novel of tremendous power and beauty about a man's hidden past and about the immutability of love and loss.

For 20 years Christian Benediktsson has led a quiet life as William Randolph Hearst's butler. His days are filled with the rituals of Hearst's life and the demands of running a grand house. But in his most private thoughts and memories, he relives another life: his abandonment of his wife and children in Iceland for an actress in New York, a reckless affair and a tragic death, financial downfall, and the profound retreat from life that led him to Hearst’s San Simeon. No one else knows the secret of the man he once was—husband, father, businessman, lover—and, ultimately, even he will choose to forget that this person ever existed.

Walking into the Night is a portrait of a man wrestling with guilt and secret passions.

About the Author
(From the publisher) Olafsson grew up in Reykjavik, but has lived in New York for much of his adult life. He is the author of two previous novels, The Journey Home and Absolution. His work has been translated into 14 languages.

He has been very successful in business too. As the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment he supervised the introduction of the Playstation video game consol to the US and Europe. However he considers himself first and foremost a writer.