Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA
Amaryllis Fox, 2019
Knopf Doubleday
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525654971
Summary
Amaryllis Fox's riveting memoir tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter.
Amaryllis Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded.
Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master's program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where she created an algorithm that predicted, with uncanny certainty, the likelihood of a terrorist cell arising in any village around the world.
At twenty-one, she was recruited by the CIA. Her first assignment was reading and analyzing hundreds of classified cables a day from foreign governments and synthesizing them into daily briefs for the president. Her next assignment was at the Iraq desk in the Counterterrorism center.
At twenty-two, she was fast-tracked into advanced operations training, sent from Langley to "the Farm," where she lived for six months in a simulated world learning how to use a Glock, how to get out of flexicuffs while locked in the trunk of a car, how to withstand torture, and the best ways to commit suicide in case of captivity.
At the end of this training she was deployed as a spy under non-official cover—the most difficult and coveted job in the field as an art dealer specializing in tribal and indigenous art and sent to infiltrate terrorist networks in remote areas of the Middle East and Asia.
Life Undercover is exhilarating, intimate, fiercely intelligent—an impossible to put down record of an extraordinary life, and of Amaryllis Fox's astonishing courage and passion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1980-81
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Oxford University; M.S. (?), Georgetown University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Amaryllis Fox was born in New York City to an English actress and American economist. Due to her father's work in the developing world, the family moved yearly to places in Africa, South East Asia, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Those childhood experiences instilled in Fox both a calling and a feeling of being at home in far flung corners of the world.
Before heading to college, Fox volunteered in the Mai Laa refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border; she ended up deferring her entrance to school, remaining in Burma to work with the Burmese democracy movement. A BBC interview she conducted with Burmese human rights activist (and 1991 Nobel laureate), Aung San Suu Kyi, landed her in prison at the age of 18.
In 1991, Fox entered Oxford University where she studied international law. She spent much of the following three years in East Timor, helping to settle displaced persons in the world's newest country. She also worked in war-torn Bosnia, helping to rebuild community trust in the aftermath of the 1995 massacre.
In 2002, Fox began graduate work in international security at Georgetown University. There she developed an algorithm to predict terrorist activity. Learning of her work, the CIA asked her to share the algorithm with the Agency.
Soon after, Fox began work as a political and terrorism analyst for South East Asia, requiring her to commute between Langley and Georgetown to finish her degree. Following graduation (with honors) in 2004, she moved into the CIA's operational training program, eventually serving as a Clandestine Service officer overseas until 2009.
Her work with the CIA became the subject of her 2019 memoir, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA.
Following her CIA career in the field, Amaryllis Fox has covered current events and offered analysis for CNN, National Geographic, Al Jazeera, the BBC, and other global news outlets. She speaks at events and universities around the world on the topic of peacemaking.
She is the co-host of History Channel's series American Ripper and lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter. And, yes, she married a Kennedy. (Adapted from the publisher and WME Speakers.)
Book Reviews
Genius…. Fascinating…. [A]long with the cloak-and-dagger action, Fox writes movingly of trying to reconcile a career in espionage with family life…. A look inside the CIA that the agency isn’t ready for you to see…. [A] great read.
Washington Post
A timely, compelling story. As fellow citizens, we’d all do well to better understand what that vital work entails.
LA Times
Gripping…reads like a true-life thriller.
San Francisco Chronicle
Gripping…. Life Undercover sets aside high-octane street chases and gunfights for an equally riveting narrative of compassion, revealing that the path to peace is through understanding the common humanity in us all.
Paste Magazine
A riveting account of the decade the author spent risking her life in the CIA’s most clandestine unit.
People
(Starred review) Fox delivers a gripping memoir about the near decade she spent working for the CIA to help stop terrorism.… [She] masterfully conveys the exhilaration and loneliness of life undercover, and her memoir reads like a great espionage novel.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [R]riveting…. Fans of Showtime's Homeland and espionage novels will devour this highly recommended memoir, as will readers interested in counterterrorism, nonprofileration, and peacemaking. —Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID
Library Journal
(Starred review) With loads of suspense and adrenaline,… this insider’s view into how the CIA functions and what life is like for a covert agent will appeal to many, including readers who don’t normally stray from fiction thrillers.
Booklist
Fox [writes] engagingly—and transparently…. Throughout much of her remarkable life, secrecy was the norm, but by the time she left the agency, she'd had enough. A well-written account of a life lived under exceptional secrecy and pressure.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for LIFE UNDERDOVER … then take off on your own:
1. How did Amaryllis's childhood experiences and family life prepare her for life as a spy? Take into account the family's yearly moves, the secrets within her parents' marriage, and her genius, older brother—what role did each of those factors play?
2. Her best friends' death in the downing of the Pan Am flight had a powerful impact on Fox's life. Her father offered his eight-year-old daughter this response: "You have to understand the forces that took her. It will seem less scary if you do." What do you think of that advice? How would you have responded in his stead?
3. Even before she begins college, Fox strikes out on a mission, heading to Thailand and Burma to volunteer in a refugee camp and, later, to work for an underground newspaper. What enables someone so young—or a person of any age, really—to act with such idealism and courage? How do you account for such determination?
4. What were some of the greatest challenges in Fox's life as an undercover agent? Consider the physical danger inherent in covert operations, as well as the emotional toll it took on her.
5. (Follow-up to Question 4) Ultimately, what prompted her decision to leave the agency? What price did she realize she had paid after a decade of undercover work?
6. Finally, what lessons did Fox take away from her undercover work?
7. How does Amaryllis Fox's memoir compare with the HBO series Homeland?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)