Publisher's Synopsis
In 1945, a Dutch art dealer was arrested for selling a national treasure - a painting by Vermeer - to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. The charge was treason, the sentence death. Imprisoned, Han van Meegeren was incapable of uttering the words that would set him free: 'I am a forger'... In the world of modern art his work had been ridiculed as old-fashioned. Plotting revenge on his detractors, he executed a skilful swindle which earned him the equivalent of fifty million dollars and the acclaim of the very critics who had mocked him; and saw his paintings hanging next to those of Rembrandt and Vermeer.
