February 2016 Host:  Jennie

Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon

Summary

This novel is set in Berlin in the winter of 1948-49.  The main character Alex, a writer, flees from the United States to Germany after defying a congressional investigation into communism and begins spying for the CIA in order to return to the United States and reunite with his son.  Ironically, being half Jewish, he had fled the Nazis in Germany 15 years earlier.   Alex becomes an instant prominent artist comrade in the Soviet Occupied Zone.  Alex soon learns that this is not the city of his youth and becomes embroiled in secrets, lies, and danger.  What was supposed to be a quick and easy job turns into a deadly and life threatening situation.  In this espionage thriller, Kanon delivers realistic characters and invokes the atmosphere of a postwar Berlin that has become a gray and bleak wasteland, and what Berliners had to do to survive their new reality.  This is an intriguing page turning thriller and we highly recommend it. 

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