Leaving Berlin
Joseph Kanon, 2015
Atria Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476704647
Summary
From the bestselling author of Istanbul Passage—called a "fast-moving thinking man’s thriller" by The Wall Street Journal—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 war’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 assignment—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 Kanon’s new novel is a compelling thriller and a love story that brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1946
• Where—in the state of Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—Harvard University; Cambridge University
• Awards—Edgar Award; Hammet Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Joseph Kanon is an American author, best known for thriller and spy novels set in the period immediately after World War II.
Kanon was born in Pennsylvania and studied at Harvard University and at Trinity College in Cambridge. As an undergraduate, he published his first stories in the The Atlantic Monthly. Later he became editor in chief, CEO, and president of the publishing houses Houghton Mifflin and E. P. Dutton in New York, before he began writing in 1995.
Books
1997 - Los Alamos - Edgar Award for best first novel
1998 - The Prodigal Spy
2001 - The Good German - adapted to film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett
2005 - Alibi - Hammett Award (International Association of Crime Writers)
2009 - Stardust
2012 - Istanbul Passage
2015 - Leaving Berlin
Kanon is also a recipient of The Anne Frank Human Writers Award for his writings on the aftermath of the Holocaust
Kanon's stories are set in the period between World War II and 1950, and he has often used a real event, such as the Potsdam Conference or the Manhattan Project, as the background for a murder case. His novels are critically acclaimed, and reviewers from the Boston Globe and the New York Times have compared his work with the novels of Graham Greene and John le Carre.
Kanon lives with his wife, the literary agent Robin Straus, in New York City. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/15/2015.)
Book Reviews
Engaging...deftly captures the ambience of a city that’s still a wasteland almost four years after the Nazis’ defeat.... Kanon keeps the story humming along, enriching the main narrative with vignettes that heighten the atmosphere of duplicity and distrust.
New York Times Book Review
Joseph Kanon’s thought-provoking, pulse-pounding historical espionage thriller [is] stuffed with incident and surprise. . . . Mr. Kanon, author now of seven top-notch novels of period political intrigue, conveys the bleak, oppressive, and creepy atmosphere of occupied Berlin in a detailed, impressive manner. . . . Leaving Berlin is a mix of tense action sequences, sepia-tinged reminiscence, convincing discourse and Berliner wit.
Wall Street Journal
Kanon, who writes his novels at the New York Public Library, conjures from there a Berlin of authentic menace and such hairpin turns that Leaving Berlin evokes comparisons to John LeCarre and Alan Furst. Such good company.
New York Daily News
Not for nothing has Kanon – whose previous books include The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, has been compared to the suspense masters Graham Greene and John LeCarre. He’s certainly in the ballpark.
Buffalo News
The old-fashioned spy craft, the many plot twists and the moral ambiguities that exist in all of the characters make Leaving Berlin an intriguing, page-turning thriller.There’s also a star-crossed love story—and an airport farewell—that might remind some readers of Bogie and Bergman. But it’s the author’s attention to historical detail—his ability to convey the sights, sounds and feel of a beaten-down Berlin—that makes this book so compelling.
Ft. Worth Star Telegram
Galloping and compulsive…. I can’t imagine anyone putting it down…. Admirably atmospheric, the picture of the ravaged Berlin excellently done…. An enjoyable thriller, high-class entertainment.
Allen Massie - Scotsman
An unforgettable picture of a city wrecked by defeat and riddled withbetrayal. Brilliant.
Kate Saunders - (London) Times
Kanon brings the hardships and moral decay of post-war Berlin to lifein glorious detail, ratcheting up the suspense as Meier tries to escape the netclosing in on all sides. Absorbing.
Sunday Express (UK)
There's too much backstory and the period details sometimes bog down the narrative, but once all the pieces are in place the story hits its stride. Kanon likes to wrestle with the moral dimensions of spying (a la le Carre)—and what's more, he's very good at it.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A pleasure from start to finish, blending literary finesse with action, this atmospheric historical thriller will appeal not only to Kanon's many fans but to those who enjoy Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, and other masters of wartime and postwar espionage fiction. —Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson
Library Journal
Kanon, like Alan Furst, has found a landscape and made it his own. In fact, the two writers make outstanding bookends in any collection of WWII fiction, Furst bringing Paris just before and during the war to vivid life, and Kanon doing the same for Berlin in its aftermath.
Booklist
[E]xplores the grave moral complexities of life in Soviet-controlled East Berlin.... [T]he atmosphere is so rich, the characters so well-drawn and the subject so fascinating.... Another compelling, intellectually charged period piece by Kanon, who works in the shadows of fear as well as anyone now writing.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When the Allies agreed to a joint occupation of Germany and its capital, the arrangement was expected to be temporary, an interim step toward a demilitarized neutral Germany. But four years later, the time of Leaving Berlin, we see those lines of occupation hardening into permanent borders that would last for forty years. What happened in these first four crucial postwar years?
2. On page 38, Willy tells Alex that the Communists were claiming the "moral high ground." What did they think justified this? Why was the East so successful in attracting exiled cultural figures? Were there ideological as well as practical reasons?
3. Soon after Alex learns that his former lover Irene is the mistress of a Soviet State Security official, she admits that she only sleeps with Markovsky to ensure her own safety. How does Irene’s pragmatism distinguish her from others in the novel? Do you think she was changed by the war, or is she fundamentally the same person now living in different circumstances?
4. The community of exiles returning to Germany in the novel revolves largely around the historical figure Bertolt Brecht and his production, Mother Courage and Her Children. Yet Alex remains slightly critical of the dramatist’s pretentions throughout, mentioning at one point that "what Brecht had really been in exile from all these years was not Berlin, but the twenties, with their tart, almost thrilling nihilism" (79). Is this a fair criticism? How large a role do you think self-interest played in Brecht’s decision to return? How had exile changed him?
5. Each of the American spies Alex encounters is taken aback by his natural talent for espionage. How might Alex’s profession as a novelist inform his ability to manipulate both American and Soviet intelligence?
6. Markovsky notes with pleasure how rubble from Nazi Germany’s ruins are repurposed to build "a new city right on top of the old one" (172). How do Kanon’s descriptions of ruins throughout the novel confirm or refute Markovsky’s ideas of renewal?
7. On page 218, Fritsch’s film pitch brings Alex back to "California, a producer pointing at him with a cigar, rewriting the world." Where else does the novel show the blurring of the lines between journalism, art, and propaganda? Are any of the writers or radio producers in the novel free from having their work used as propaganda?
8. When Alex travels with Roberta Kleinbard to Oranienburg in order to see her imprisoned husband, the Russian guard sneers that her name is Jewish. "Nothing had changed," Alex claims, "new uniforms" (252). In what ways is the Soviet administration in East Berlin similar to the Nazi regime? In what ways is it fundamentally different?
9. When Markus’s mother is released from the Russian camps after her sentence for "counterrevolutionary statements" is commuted, he reacts to her return with confusion and dismay. Why is he unable to embrace her? Is he afraid of his own emotions, or simply hardened to the point where he doesn’t feel? Or is it a more complicated response?
10. When Irene asks Alex if he loves her, as they prepare to say goodbye, he responds, "I do [. . .] But I can see you better now. All of you. Erich. Elsbeth. You. Before I just saw what I wanted to see." (368). What has changed in Alex that allows him now to see reality instead of a more comforting illusion? In what ways does Irene, too, now see Alex more clearly?
11. After all the subterfuge Alex uses to protect himself, Irene, and Erich in East Germany, he passes the Brandenburg Gate and enters West Berlin without ceremony. In a decade’s time the Berlin Wall would have blocked Alex’s unimpeded passage, and Kanon takes care to describe his protagonist’s path down the Luisenstrasse so that his footsteps trace the fated border. How does this retrospective knowledge impact the meaning of the last paragraph of the book?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)