Tag Archives: Cold War

The Secrets We Kept

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Dr. Zhivago is at the heart of Lara Prescott’s debut novel – The Secrets We Kept, as the action flips back and forth from Boris Pasternak and his lover Olga Ivinskaya in Russia to secretaries who are really American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives in Washington, D.C.  How could a romantic epic raise the ire of the Russian government, especially Kruschev, and tempt the CIA to smuggle copies into Russia to prompt its citizens to question their government?

Although Pasternak’s novel is a love story, but with political undertones, Prescott uses historical research to reveal the constraints the Russian author and others in the country endured.  When the book is banned in Russia but published in Italy, and eventually everywhere in the world but in Russia, Olga, who is not only Pasternak’s muse and mistress but also his literary agent is sent to a Russian prison and he is under constant surveillance. Although I knew the story drawn from Pasternak’s life experience – the main character who does not leave his wife, while passionately connected to his beautiful mistress, I did not know the intrigue behind publishing the book in Italy and smuggling it back into Russia for “soft propaganda warfare – using art, music, and literature . . . to emphasize how the Soviet system did not allow free thought.”   The Secrets We Kept proved educational as well as informative.

I found the East section of the book describing the lives and loves in Russia more compelling than the West with its secret missions and nebulous relationships, but the idea “that literature could change the course of history” was enticing and prompted me to find the book once banned in Russia – not that long ago.  Like many famous Russian novels, Dr. Zhivago has been adapted to film, and I vaguely remember watching the snowy scenes with beautiful Julie Christie and handsome Omar Sheriff, but I had never read the book. In fact, I may have only experienced great Russian novels late at night through the classic movie channel – War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Sea Gull. Pasternak was a poet first and his words were acclaimed as powerful as well as expressive when the Nobel Prize Committee cited him “for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition.” This book is available for free from the Gutenberg Press, and it seems a good place to initiate my reading of Russian literature.

As the book flips back and forth from East (Russia) and West (CIA), the narrator shifts to different characters and it’s not always clear who is talking.  The Western section focuses on two secretary/agents and their intersecting personal lives, leading to an ambiguous ending, but the historical facts shine in the Eastern section.  Of course, like its Russian counterpart – the Secrets We Kept has been optioned for a movie but the book would make for an interesting book club discussion.

A Map of Betrayal

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9780307911605_p0_v1_s260x420Ha Jin examines the struggle of a Chinese spy torn between his homeland and his new American life in A Map of Betrayal. I found Ha Jin when I read his stunning portrayal of Chinese life in Waiting; he has the ability to transport the reader to China with his detailed descriptions and his emotional observations. In A Map of Betrayal Ha Jin creates a stirring inner conflict with the story of Gary Shang, the most important Chinese spy who infiltrated the CIA.

Lillian Shang, an American professor, discovers her father’s diaries detailing his secret past, separated from a wife and children in China, before he established his cover in the United States and married her American mother. Working for China, Shang constantly looked for a way to satisfy his yearning to return home, yet his ties through his new family and connections created a conflict of emotions and loyalties. Lillian returns to China to find his family, as Ha Jin slowly unravels a past full of history and intrigue.

Prominent names – Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao – float through the narrative as the author connects the politics of the times to Gary Shang’s journey from lowly translator to astute analyst and secret arbiter for both countries. Ha Jin attributes a number of détente agreements, including renewed relations between China and the United States, to Shang’s secret efforts.

Although the detailed descriptions can be overwhelming at times, reading through them gives the reader the history to create an effective backdrop for Shang’s life. When the plot turns to reveal another generation of spies, Ha Jin follows the current attitudes between countries. The ending offers a clear perspective and poses the question: Is the man betraying the country or the country betraying the man?

A Map of Betrayal takes careful reading to catch all the nuances, but a worthwhile book to contemplate and possibly discuss.

Related Review:  Waiting

The Summer of the Bear

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The suspicious death of a high-ranking British diplomat creates whispers of treason and spies; everyone seems to have lost faith in Nicky Fleming except his young son in Bella Pollen’s Cold War mystery – The Summer of the Bear.

After his untimely death, Nicky’s family flees to a remote Scottish island in the Hebrides for the safety of old family surroundings and seclusion from the harsh innuendo of the diplomatic gossips.  Letty, Nicky’s wife is tortured by his incriminating death-bed letter; Georgie, his seventeen year old daughter harbors a secret uncovered when she accompanied her father to East Berlin; Alba, fourteen, is angry at the world and her father for deserting them.  Only eight year old Jamie believes his father will keep his promise and come back to tell his family the truth.

As the family copes with their grief – each in their own way – a bear that has escaped from a one-man circus act appears intermittently in the action.  Pollen assigns chapters to the thoughts of each: Letty, Georgie, Alba, Jamie – and the bear.  Jamie believes the bear is his father in a new form, and Pollen allows the bear’s thoughts, its interest in the family, and its protective instincts toward the children to make the connection a possibility.

Place is important to the story – from the watchful paranoia at the Wall dividing Berlin to the proper stiffness of the British diplomatic corps in West Berlin, to finally, the wild Outer Hebrides.  Pollen spent her childhood summers in the Scottish Highlands and her descriptions of the raw beauty of the cliffs, the birds, and the sea places you there in that magical yet forbidding place.

I was caught up in the intrigue; was Nicky’s death murder, suicide, accident?  Did he betray his family and country?  Was he a double agent?  Pollen maintains the suspense while demonstrating how differently each character deals with the grief and uncertainty as well as with each other.   Although the dramatic ending is neatly tied with the imagination and loyalty of the young boy, my satisfaction came with the possibility – the belief – that the bear really was the savior.   More than a mystery or an examination of family relationships and loyalties, The Summer of the Bear is a sweet comfort I enjoyed.

Russian Winter

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Winter is coming soon to some places – even here in the tropics, the sun sets in a different spot as it sinks into the ocean, the wind blows a little chillier, mornings are crisper.  Not too many fireplaces where I live, but if you have one, Daphne Kalotay’s Russian Winter could be cozy solace as you sip your hot chocolate or brandy.

A romantic mystery involving a famous Russian ballerina who defected with precious jewels, Russian Winter slowly unravels the life of one of the Bolshoi’s stars, Nina Revskay.    Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, who defected to the United States in the sixties, died recently – giving Kalotay’s book an eerie timeliness.

The story meanders back and forth from Nina’s flashbacks; in the present Nina is an old frail woman who is mysteriously bitter about her past and holds a terrifying secret.  She decides to sell the jewels she hid in her escape from Stalin to the free world, with her amber bracelet and earrings holding special value for their personal history and provenance.

Drew, the young associate at the Boston auction house where the jewels will be sold is dealing with her own personal demons; Grigori Solodin, a professor of Russian literature, who owns the necklace in the amber set, is determined to discover the jewel’s link to his parentage. They both have questions that Nina is reluctant to answer.

Kalotay sprinkles her narrative with historic references to Russian life before and after Stalin, including information about the labor camps and amber mines.  Kalotay  also documents the changes in the work and life of artists living in Soviet Russia and offers clear and detailed insights into that culture.  The cast of Russian characters has a number of minor supporting characters, with the principles including Vera Borodina, Nina’s childhood friend; the Jewish composer, Aron Gershtein, who is in love with Vera; Nina’s renowned poet husband, Viktor; and Viktor’s devious mother…

{Nina}:  “People think I fled Russia to escape communism.  Really I was escaping my mother-in-law.”

The complexity of the plot and the number of characters may keep you off-balance, but in the end, love letters, a poem, and the jewels come together for the final revelation of betrayal and misunderstanding – and, of course, a happy and satisfying resolution.

Russian Winter is a slow read – you may doze off now and then while reading – but the artistic movements are graceful and the Cold War history unnerving.

Related Article:  How Stalin’s Daughter Defected

The Apothecary

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As Leonardo Di Capario and Clint Eastwood immortalize J. Edgar Hoover in a new biopic, Maile Meloy finds inspiration in the fictional lives of a Hollywood family on Hoover’s “list” who avoid testifying against their friends by relocating to London in The Apothecary. At a time when children were taught to duck and cover under their desks as protection from a bomb, and everyone was suspected to be a Russian spy, Meloy neatly connects history to fantasy in a clever mystery.

Susan is a Nancy Drew-like detective, homesick for America and feeling more than the usual angst about being in a new school. The local apothecary offers her a powder to help her adjust to her new surroundings, but when he is kidnapped by Germans, she finds herself embroiled in a spy thriller with his son, Benjamin, to save the local apothecary and possibly the world from nuclear disaster. Their immediate mission is to protect the Pharmacopeio, the apothecary’s book of mysterious formula, using plants to evoke extraordinary phenomena.

Of course, their curiosity has them applying the book’s strange recipes almost immediately. They create elixirs that turn them temporarily into birds to escape their pursuers or make them invisible in a funny sequence of preteen angst. Ian Schoenherr’s black and white graphics, sprinkled throughout the narrative, generate an other-worldly aura, and Meloy adds characters to keep the action suspenseful and humorous: Pip, the handsome street-wise boy straight out of Dickens, who can pick locks and finesse adults as well as children; Mr. Danby, the Latin teacher/war hero, who may be playing both sides of the spy game; Shiskin, the bumbling Russian double-agent; Jin Lo, the young beautiful and smart Chinese chemist.

The Apothecary is fun to read; suspend your belief and enjoy a world of impossible solutions. And imagine, if you were able to turn into a bird to fly away for a while, what kind of bird would you be?

This is Meloy’s first novel for young readers, but her other books – for adults –  include a short story collection – Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It  and the novel Liars and Saints.