Name: Leaving Berlin
ISBN: 9781471137068

Joseph Kanon

From the author of The Good German (made into a film starring George Clooney) comes a sweeping novel set in post-war Berlin. 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. Filled with intrigue and the moral ambiguity of conflicted loyalties, Leaving Berlin is a masterful thriller and a love story that brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life.

Leaving Berlin

Shaun Clark

Sadly this book is a plodder, and a slog to get through - gave up on it after weeks of trying, and I cannot remember the last time I didn't finish a book (even the pesh ones).

I really wanted this to be good, interested in the setting and environment but the plot is just such a slog, with too many coincidences and insipid, often confusing characters that it's difficult to care about them.

Alex must be the most important and busiest man in Berlin - everything and everyone seems to be waiting to spend time with him for things to happen.

One gets so bored with this book that one forgets who is actually who; it's not a difficult read nor a complex plot, it's just bereft of anything engaging happening. 

I tried, I tried - I really wanted it to work, but it's not you, it's not anyone remotely inspiring sorry.

Didn't finish. Not my type of writing style. Didn't care about the characters. The historical aspect was interesting and so were the descriptions but the characters, eh.

S. R. Spencer

New York Times Notable Book * NPR Best Books 2015 * Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2015 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.

Leaving Berlin

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