The Berlin Exchange

by Joseph Kanon

First published 2022

Amazon

4.1(2,565)

Berlin, 1963. Martin Keller, an American physicist imprisoned in Britain for spying for the Soviet Union, is unexpectedly released in a Cold War prisoner exchange and sent to East Berlin. He accepts the deal because it offers a chance to see his former wife Sabine and their young son, but the exchange immediately raises a more dangerous question: why did the East Germans and the KGB specifically ask for him?

Behind the Berlin Wall, Keller discovers that freedom in the German Democratic Republic is another form of confinement. His scientific expertise is dated, surveillance is constant and the people arranging his new life expect a service they have not yet named. As he tries to protect his family and understand the purpose of the exchange, the novel turns divided Berlin into a maze of intelligence loyalties, escape routes and political bargains at the height of the early Cold War.