Leaving Berlin: A Novel

Leaving Berlin: A Novel

From the bestselling author of Istanbul Passageâ€”called a â€œfast-moving thinking manâ€™s thrillerâ€ by The Wall Street Journalâ€”comes a sweeping, atmospheric novel of postwar East Berlin, a city caught between political idealism and the harsh realities of Soviet occupation.

Berlin 1948. Almost four years after the warâ€™s end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the West, a defiant, blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies; in the East, the heady early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the murky compromises of the Cold War. Espionage, like the black market, is a fact of life. Even culture has become a battleground, with German intellectuals being lured back from exile to add credibility to the competing sectors.

Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin. But almost from the start things go fatally wrong. A kidnapping misfires, an East German agent is killed, and Alex finds himself a wanted man. Worse, he discovers his real assignmentâ€”to spy on the woman he left behind, the only woman he has ever loved. Changing sides in Berlin is as easy as crossing a sector border. But where do we draw the lines of our moral boundaries? Betrayal? Survival? Murder?

Filled with intrigue, and the moral ambiguity of conflicted loyalties, Joseph Kanonâ€™s new novel is a compelling thriller and a love story that brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life.
Country USA
Manufacturer Atria Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2015-03-03
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Atria Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2015-03-03
Format	Kindle eBook

Leaving Berlin: A Novel

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