But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. Even culture has become a battleground, with German intellectuals being lured back from exile to add credibility to the competing sectors. Espionage, like the black market, is a fact of life. 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. Almost four years after the war's end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. '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. We learn of the compromises some Germans in the Soviet sector choose to make with the Russians, and how within the sector unease and mistrust is developing due to the blossoming of secret informers.Targeted by McCarthyism for his prewar politics, a young Jewish writer who fled the Nazis to America makes a desperate bargain with a fledgling CIA to work as a spy in a decimated Berlin The tale's present action is darkly underlined by Alex's pre-war past during the Nazi emergence and what happened to some of his friends as a result. This and his relationship with a woman he knew before the war and its consequences are the centre of Kanon's dramatic and engrossing narrative. What seems a relatively benign homecoming for Alex suddenly erupts when an attempted kidnapping goes wrong, someone is killed and he becomes a wanted man. Although never quite sure just where his true heart lies, you recognise him as a decent person – another 'good German'.

What happens in this shadowy world significantly influences Alex's decisions and actions. The artistic milieu provides an interesting backdrop to the novel's main drama of intrigue. Bertolt Brecht, among others, has also come home, culture now being part of the East-West contest. But his history of left-leaning politics has brought him under the purview of the McCarthy witch-hunts, so he returns to his native city – to the Soviet sector.

Leaving berlin by joseph kanon