NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War.“The best true spy story I have ever read.”—JOHN LE CARRÉNamed a Best Book of the Year by The Economist • Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in … Economist • Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in Nonfiction
If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation’s communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union’s top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States’s nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky’s name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain’s obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets.
Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky’s nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre’s latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man’s hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.
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Like cat-and-mouse spy stories? This is an intimate portrayal of an unusual Cold War Soviet turncoat, a man who risked all to aid the West. Scary. Fun. Highly engaging.
As ever with Ben Mackintyre’s books, this combines detailed research with page-turning writing. Fascinating.
This was an absolutely astonishing story and such a well-written book! I am a long-time fan of non-fiction, particularly because so much truth is, quite often, stranger (and more entertaining) than fiction… This is a marvelous example of that. What Gordievsky went through is nearly unbelievable in scale and scope. That he did so for ZERO monetary gain is even more so. When he is contrasted with Aldrich Ames (who doesn’t feature in the story until it is well along the way) who did what he did EXCLUSIVELY for money, the tale takes on an even more surreal slant – in the best possible way.
I was flipping pages frantically near the end, waiting to see Gordievsky’s fate (and that of his family) would be. While I was familiar with Ames’s tale, Gordievsky’s was new to me and all the more fascinating for it.
The research was meticulous and the writing was excellent. There is a LOT of detail here and it takes a while to work through it all, but throughout the book everything was so well managed that it never felt over-drawn, over-detailed, or overly-long. The story-telling was well paced and the characters jumped off the pages as a result of the extraordinary way they were presented. This was a marvelous and amazing story told by a master, and Macintyre is definitely on my “to watch” list now!!
Thanks to Penguin First to Read for my review copy.
I received an advanced copy of of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. This is the story of Oleg Gordievsky. He lived in Russia and worked for the KGB. He became disillusioned with communism and decided that he would become a spy for Britain. This is a bit dry and overly filled with details. This book and the story that it tells is however fascinating. Oleg helped in a lot of Cold War issues to help to deescalate the situation so that things didn’t blow up and the world didn’t end up in a nuclear war, sometimes literally. This was a good book, definitely one I enjoyed.