Leaving Berlin

This gripping novel is set in postwar East Berlin in 1949, at the time of the fabled airlift and increasing Cold War hostility between the Soviet Union and the United States, France and Britain. Into this volatile scene comes Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer who fled the Nazis in the early 1930s for America, where he married, had a son and wrote a best-selling novel based on his childhood. Facing deportation and the loss of his family when he refuses to cooperate with a congressional witch hunt, he strikes a deal with the CIA: Let me earn my way back into the country by spying on the East Germans and Soviets. No sooner has he arrived, however, than things start getting weird, the deaths start piling up like cordwood, and Meier finds himself in mortal danger. Leaving Berlin is brilliantly plotted, and Kanon's atmospheric depiction of postwar Berlin is remarkable. Kanon is one of our best writers of spy thrillers, and this is one of his very best novels.