“American Spy updates the espionage thriller with blazing originality.”—Entertainment Weekly“There has never been anything like it.”—Marlon James, GQ“So much fun . . . Like the best of John le Carré, it’s extremely tough to put down.”—NPRNAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • … BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • Entertainment Weekly • Esquire • BuzzFeed • Vulture • Real Simple • Good Housekeeping • The New York Public Library
What if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love?
It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Sankara is doing for his country. Yes, even though she is still grieving the mysterious death of her sister, whose example led Marie to this career path in the first place. Yes, even though a furious part of her suspects she’s being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent.
In the year that follows, Marie will observe Sankara, seduce him, and ultimately have a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American.
Inspired by true events—Thomas Sankara is known as “Africa’s Che Guevara”—American Spy knits together a gripping spy thriller, a heartbreaking family drama, and a passionate romance. This is a face of the Cold War you’ve never seen before, and it introduces a powerful new literary voice.
NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD • Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
“Spy fiction plus allegory, and a splash of pan-Africanism. What could go wrong? As it happens, very little. Clever, bracing, darkly funny, and really, really good.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Inspired by real events, this espionage thriller ticks all the right boxes, delivering a sexually charged interrogation of both politics and race.”—Esquire
“Echoing the stoic cynicism of Hurston and Ellison, and the verve of Conan Doyle, American Spy lays our complicities—political, racial, and sexual—bare. Packed with unforgettable characters, it’s a stunning book, timely as it is timeless.”—Paul Beatty, Man Booker Prizewinning author of The Sellout
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So, the story was lean and the telling had too much to make it long enough to be a novel. I liked the story. One could feel the narrator’s depression and ambivalence and it was a revealing discourse of the life of a female FBI person who’s black and what it might be like to be a spy and what a sordid world that world is. I would be interested to read something else by Lauren Wilkinson that had a different pace.
Echoing the stoic cynicism of Hurston and Ellison, and the verve of Conan Doyle, American Spy lays our complicities — political, racial, and sexual — bare. Packed with unforgettable characters, it’s a stunning book, timely as it is timeless.
The beginning had such promise, but the rest of the story was flat and boring. Definitely not a thriller.
A Spy thriller with a interesting twist. Full of political and racial commentary makes this one extremely unique especially when it adds a splash of history.
American Spy: A Novel by Lauren Wilkinson – I was amused by the reviews that knocked this book as a spy thriller. If that’s what you’re looking for, you will be disappointed. This is a book about family, loyalty, love and revenge. After almost being killed, Marie and her twin sons go to her estranged mom’s house in Martinique. There, as she plots revenge, she also starts a journal to let her twin sons know the truth about their father.
great read!
Political and social commentary is seamless with an intriguing and compelling story.
Not quite what I was expecting. And it ends as if it’s part of a planned series, which kind of annoys me.
I loved this book, but was also challenged by it somewhat. I most enjoyed the author’s matter-of-fact, unembellished delivery. And I liked that I felt like I was listening to a friend explain something that happened to her, and why, and some of the conflicts she expressed about her identity, I shared. The story unfolds as a journal being written by Marie Mitchell, a former FBI agent-turned-spy, to her two young sons, explaining who their father is, and how that relates to the reason a man at the opening of the novel came to kill her, and perhaps even them.
What I loved were the complicated, layered revelations about Marie’s family: her difficult and unknowable sister, Helene; her similarly difficult and hard-to-know French Caribbean mother, and her military and law enforcement veteran father. Through her family, Marie develops a fraught relationship with her identity as a Black woman and an American, simultaneously loving and feeling critical of and dissatisfied with her relationship with America. Her high school boyfriend, Robbie a wannabe revolutionary, influenced by the Black Panthers and various resistance theories, further challenges Marie’s thinking. But most influential, always, is her sister Helene whose example leads Marie to become one of very few Black special agents in the FBI in the eighties.
Sidelined because her race and gender, conflicted by the various race and social justice theories of the day, as well as a vague sense that thinking of America as “the good guys” is simplistic at best, and dangerously naive at worst, Marie falls in the thrall of Thomas Sankara, an African revolutionary. Like Marie’s relationship with America (and all her relationships, actually) Sankara’s identity (revolutionary or dictator) is morally ambiguous. Marie is intrigued by that ambiguity and agrees to a mission to help displace him as President of Burkina Faso.
A fascinating premise, as was the idea of a Black female special agent in the FBI struggling between racial identity and patriotism. That carried the book for me, even where, at times, key plot points remained underdeveloped. Marie tells her sons that their father was her great love, yet they barely know each other, having had fewer than a half dozen encounters by the book’s end, leaving precious little time to convince us of their connection. Marie is–we are told–torn between love of her Black people and her country, yet seems to have no inner monologue that expresses a particular attachment to either. She has a curiously dispassionate view of American foreign policy, even when she recognizes it may be unjust, or even damaging. She stands outside of and apart from the operations of the CIA, even as she actively and willingly participates in many of them.
At the end of the book, not only couldn’t I figure her out. I wasn’t sure she succeeded in figuring herself out, other than to know that she loved her children, and had loved their father. I suspect that this author will continue Marie Mitchell’s journey in other novels, not because the book felt unfinished necessarily, but because it felt like an introduction to a character and their backstory, rather than a complete story in and of itself. If we meet Marie Mitchell again, I’m here for it.
Recommended.
I was disappointed with this book. The reviews and recommendations were praising the book as a best book of the year. In actuality, it is a mediocre story wherein the narrator is giving a romantic tale of being a disgraced low level FBI agent who was duped into going to Africa to be a spy. There are many holes in the plot and the ending is weak.
The only anger I ever expose to the world is through implication, by suggesting that I’m on the brink of no longer being able to contain my fury. This is what a woman’s strength looks like when it’s palatable: like she is containing herself.
Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy is a brilliantly paced novel that continually keeps you guessing. At the height of the Cold War, Marie Mitchell is an under-appreciated FBI agent who is recruited to spy on Thomas Sankara, the president of Burkina Faso. His Communist ideology has made him a political target to the United States. As she becomes more involved with Thomas and more aware of what she’s actually gotten herself into, she’ll have to risk everything to do what she thinks is right.
One of the things that makes this novel so compelling is the use of second-person narration. It helps the reader feel completely immersed in what is happening, but also makes them aware that the story they are consuming is told from a very specific viewpoint. Additionally, I found the confluence of the issues that surround race, gender, political ideology, and expressions of love to be enthralling and especially timely. This isn’t just a spy thriller; it’s a commentary on Reaganomics, racial and gender discrimination, and egomania. It’s about Marie’s love for the few people who she has let into her life. It’s about how sometimes a political movement is more important than the individual, and how sometimes it’s not. It’s an allegory to much of what is still happening in this current political landscape.
Without mentioning any spoilers, I will say that the ending does feel somewhat abrupt (I kept thinking that there weren’t enough pages to possibly finish the story), but I think that the choice to end the novel where it ends is as perfect as it is infuriating. Wilkinson’s voice is unique and perceptive, and I look forward to reading more of her work.
Important and thought-provoking
The author dropped the mic on the ending, it wasn’t very thrilling., it was Just a boring quasi love story with an obnoxious and “smart” narrator. It was off to a good start and quickly turned into a bore, character development is not the author’s strong suit. I never really enjoyed the main charcture either, she just seemed bratty.
American Spy is by turns suspenseful, tender, and funny, always smart and searingly honest. Lauren Wilkinson renders the world of spies with vivacity and depth, and shines a penetrating light on what it’s like to be a black woman in America. But like all great novels, this one teaches us most about ourselves and our values.
Like all secret agents, Lauren Wilkinson is a keen observer, capable of gathering real intelligence. American Spy is a trenchant commentary on race and gender in America, disguised as a spy thriller.