{"product_id":"leaving-berlinbooks","title":"Leaving Berlin","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA sweeping spy thriller about a city caught between political idealism and the harsh realities of Soviet occupation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBerlin, 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.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAlex 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 cross-hairs 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? At betrayal? Survival? Murder?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJoseph Kanon’s compelling thriller is a love story that brilliantly brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Kanon, Joseph","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44088666128608,"sku":"","price":6.5,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0330\/3125\/8248\/files\/OIP_7b6bcf10-acaf-4bad-8855-becc21ab1659.jpg?v=1689432950","url":"https:\/\/agricola-street-books.myshopify.com\/products\/leaving-berlinbooks","provider":"Agricola Street Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}