Leaving Berlin

A Novel

By: Joseph Kanon

Narrated by: Corey Brill

New York Times Notable Book * Named one of NPR and Wall Street Journal's Best Books of the Year *

The acclaimed author of The Good German “deftly captures the ambience” (The New York Times Book Review) of postwar East Berlin in his “thought-provoking, pulse-pounding” (Wall Street Journal) New York Times bestseller—a sweeping spy thriller about 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? At betrayal? Survival? Murder? Joseph Kanon’s compelling thriller is a love story that brilliantly brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life.

Wonderfully complex!

I loved this book! Intriguing, complicated, well-plotted, well-written and well-read. Set in a time period I knew little about, the Berlin airlift, the book demonstrates the warring factions within oneself, as well as the warring factions in the political manuevering that followed WWII in Germany. As the reviewer for The (London) Telegraph put it, " One knows that a war will end some day: but what if peace entails unending misery?" And who chooses known "misery" over the chance of a new and peaceful life? The narrator is grand--an interesting voice, moving easily between hints of the appropriate accents of various characters. Good, good listen--highly recommended!

Well-crafted spy thriller

If Agatha Christie wrote a spy novel, this is what she would have written. Excellent writing, spacing, and narration. You think you know where you're going, and are jerked in a skidding spin. Indeed, all the way to the last paragraph.

Dark Dark Dark

I enjoyed this Cold War, spy novel, but don't go into it expecting a whole lot of happy things to happen. Still, it's well written and there are enough surprising twist to keep you interested.

Fast

The book was written very well, the dialogue being the best part. I could feel the conversation between characters. I wish the book were longer, or more built around the espionage factor, but that's only personal preference. A good read, for anyone into spy, or post WWII era Germany.

this book is a old fashioned spy novel

ho hum. not earth-shattering and 1 wonders what the author was trying to say on a deeper level.