Berlin Game

Penguin Modern Classics

By: Len Deighton

Narrated by: James Lailey

Brought to you by Penguin.

Embattled agent Bernard Samson is used to being passed over for promotion as his younger, more ambitious colleagues - including his own wife Fiona - rise up the ranks of MI6. When a valued agent in East Berlin warns the British of a mole at the heart of the Service, Samson must return to the field and the city he loves to uncover the traitor's identity. This is the first novel in Len Deighton's acclaimed, Game, Set and Match trilogy.

A BERNARD SAMSON NOVEL

'Masterly ... dazzlingly intelligent and subtle' Sunday Times

'Deighton's best novel to date - sharp, witty and sour, like Raymond Chandler adapted to British gloom and the multiple betrayals of the spy' Observer

© Len Deighton 1983 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Critic reviews

The Berlin Game trilogy made lockdown possible. (Olivia Laing)

Deighton's outstanding achievement is the nine-volume series chronicling the life and times of Bernard Samson ... Deighton's Samson trilogies are as much about the elusiveness of human interactions as espionage. Spying is not a secret world sealed off from ordinary life but an extension of the world we all live in. (John Gray)

Spying at its most captivating and intricate. (Marcel Berlins)

Deighton's best novel to date - sharp, witty and sour, like Raymond Chandler adapted to British gloom and the multiple betrayals of the private spy.

Virtuoso top level performance.

Sheer consistent rightness page after page after page.

A labyrinthine espionage epic lightened with laconic wit. (Jeremy Duns)

Deighton, as always, makes the familiar twists and turns of spy errantry new again, partly by his grip of narrative, partly by his grasp of character, and partly by his easy, sardonic tone.

Len Deighton's spy novels are so good they make me sad the Cold War is over. (Malcolm Gladwell)