Leaving Berlin

Name: Leaving Berlin
Rating: 3.9 (5382 reviews)

by Joseph Kanon

First published 2014

Amazon

3.9(5,382)

Berlin, 1948–49. Alex Meier, a German-born Jewish novelist who fled the Nazis for the United States, is caught by the American anti-Communist investigations and offered a way to recover his future: return to Soviet-controlled Berlin and work secretly for the CIA. He arrives during the blockade and airlift, joining a circle of returning exiles that includes Bertolt Brecht while the Soviet authorities use culture as another front in the struggle over Germany.

Alex’s assignment soon becomes personal when he is ordered to report on Irene, the woman he left behind before the war, now connected to a Soviet security official. A failed operation, a killing and information about German prisoners working in Soviet-controlled uranium mines force him to improvise between American intelligence, Soviet power and the emerging East German security system. The ruined city becomes a place where changing sectors can mean changing loyalties, but no border provides a clean escape from the past.