From the bestselling author of Istanbul Passage—called a “fast-moving thinking man’s thriller” by The Wall Street Journal—comes a sweeping, atmospheric novel of postwar East Berlin, 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? 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.

約瑟夫•卡農（Joseph Kanon）

愛倫•坡奬得主，著有《德國好人》《伊斯坦布爾逃亡》《不在場證明》《星塵》等作品。其中，《德國好人》被改編為電影，由史蒂文•索德伯格執導，喬治•剋魯尼和凱特•布蘭切特主演。1970年從哈佛畢業，在布朗齣版社就任編輯；之後的幾年，他加入普特南/科沃德•麥坎並成為總編輯。後來，他又跳槽至E.P.Dutton齣版社齣任總編輯及董事長。在米夫林齣版集團度過瞭他最後的齣版職業生涯，在職八年間，他擔任集團的執行副總裁及貿易銷售部門主管。在齣版行業沉浮25餘載，於1995年辭職，成為全職作傢。