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Published Mar 2015
384 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
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.
"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." - Library Journal
"Another compelling, intellectually charged period piece by Kanon, who works in the shadows of fear as well as anyone now writing." - Kirkus
"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
"If you are looking for a combination of le Carre and Graham Greene, Leaving Berlin will do the trick perfectly...One of the most exciting books I have read for years." - Alexander McCall Smith, Mail on Sunday (UK), named Book of the Year
"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." - The Scotsman (UK)
"An unforgettable picture of a city wrecked by defeat and riddled with betrayal. Brilliant." - The Times (UK)
"Kanon brings the hardships and moral decay of post-war Berlin to life in glorious detail, ratcheting up the suspense as Meier tries to escape the net closing in on all sides. Absorbing." - The Sunday Express (UK)
This information about Leaving Berlin was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
© Marion Ettlinger
Joseph Kanon is the internationally bestselling author of nine novels, which have been published in twenty-four languages: Los Alamos, which won the Edgar Award for best first novel; The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett; The Prodigal Spy, Alibi, which earned Kanon the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers; Leaving Berlin and The Defectors. He is also a recipient of The Anne Frank Human Writers Award for his writings on the aftermath of the Holocaust. Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a book publishing executive. He lives in New York City with his wife, literary agent Robin Straus. They have two sons.
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