Istanbul Passage: A Novel [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition] Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00870FLNQ | Format: PDF, EPUB
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From the acclaimed, best-selling author of Stardust,The Good German, and Los Alamos - a gripping tale of an American undercover agent in 1945 Istanbul who descends into the murky cat-and-mouse world of compromise and betrayal that will come to define the entire postwar era.
A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul has spent the war as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even American businessman Leon Bauer has been drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs and courier runs for the Allied war effort. Now, as the espionage community begins to pack up and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of postwar life, he is given one more assignment, a routine job that goes fatally wrong, plunging him into a tangle of intrigue and moral confusion.
Played out against the bazaars and mosques and faded mansions of this knowing, ancient Ottoman city, Leon's attempt to save one life leads to a desperate manhunt and a maze of shifting loyalties that threatens his own. How do you do the right thing when there are only bad choices to make? Istanbul Passage is the story of a man swept up in the aftermath of war, an unexpected love affair, and a city as deceptive as the calm surface waters of the Bosphorus that divides it.
Rich with atmosphere and period detail, Joseph Kanon's latest novel flawlessly blends fact and fiction into a haunting thriller about the dawn of the Cold War, once again proving why Kanon has been hailed as the "heir apparent to Graham Greene" (The Boston Globe).
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- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 14 hours and 48 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: May 29, 2012
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00870FLNQ
A brilliant editor told me that the best time to start reporting a big story is after everyone else is finished. The parade of media leaves town, and the people you want to talk to have plenty of time. With nothing much at stake, you get the real story.
I'm guessing that was one of the attractions of Istanbul, circa late 1945, for Joseph Kanon. The war was over, the big league spies had departed, and the only sustained action was the effort to smuggle European Jews into Palestine. A visitor could almost buy the fantasy: "In Istanbul's dream of itself it was always summer, ladies eating sherbets in garden pavilions, caiques floating by. The city shivered through winters with braziers and sweaters, somehow surprised that it had turned cold at all."
"Istanbul Passage" is billed as a thriller, in the way that the novels of Graham Greene and Alan Furst are thrillers. That is, there are guns, and they are used. But the book is also about values and codes and honor, the kind of big questions that get asked in great movies like "Casablanca" and aren't asked nearly enough in contemporary stories.
For Leon Bauer, an American vaguely involved in the tobacco trade but also an occasional tool of the American consulate's less diplomatic activities, it comes down to this: "What do you do when there's no right thing to do. Just the wrong thing. Either way."
That question makes the book's title a pun. The "passage" isn't just about Jews or, more urgently, a former Nazi collaborator who is being smuggled through Istanbul on his way to a debriefing in Washington. It's equally about Leon Bauer's moral passage. As in: You give your word to perform a service. Along the way, you learn a few things, none of them savory. Do you walk? Is your word your bond?
Joseph Kanon is the author of six novels including, Los Alamos, which won the Edgar Award for best first novel; The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett; The Prodigal Spy and Alibi, which earned Kanon the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers;and Istanbul Passage, his latest novel. Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a book publishing executive. Kanon was last reported to live in New York City with his wife, literary agent Robin Straus, and their two sons.
It was the end of World War II. The Americans and the Russians are vying for dominance in what will become known later as the "Cold War" an era of mistrust; the war is over, everyone is packing up to leave Istanbul. The American's clandestine operation was conducted from the American Consul. It was engaged in disrupting German war supply efforts through the guise of operatives in legitimate businesses like R.J. Reynolds, Commercial Corp and Western Electric. There were others too, humanitarians, passionate for the repatriation of the Jewish refugees with Palestine; clandestine operations that provided illegal passage for them through sea ports on the Bosporus. As the story opens, Leon Bauer and his friend Mihai are proceeding to the sea port for a clandestine pickup of a German. It was arranged by Leon's friend and sometime employer, Tommy, who worked at the American Consul. It was a simple job, pick the German up whisk him away to a safe place and protect him until he is transported out of Turkey by the Americans. That was the plan but not everyone saw the same ending. Leon intercepts the German at the landing; suddenly gun fire erupts, the fire is returned and a dead man is left by the road side above.
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