Join us for the first in a series of events with the Pushkin House Book Prize 2020 shortlisted authors. Owen Matthews's book An Impeccable Spy tells the fascinating story of Soviet agent Richard Sorge, taking a sweeping historical perspective and draws on a wealth of declassified Soviet archives - along with testimonies from those who knew and worked with Sorge - to rescue the riveting story of the man described by Ian Fleming as 'the most formidable spy in history'.
Richard Sorge was a man with two homelands. Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of the First World War, Sorge became a fanatical communist – and the Soviet Union's most formidable spy. As a foreign correspondent, he infiltrated and influenced the highest echelons of German, Chinese and Japanese society in the years leading up to and including the Second World War. His intelligence regarding Operation Barbarossa and Japanese intentions not to invade Siberia in 1941 proved pivotal to the Soviet counteroffensive in the Battle of Moscow, which in turn determined the outcome of the war.
“A fascinating biography ... Owen Matthews tells the story of Sorge's extraordinary life with tremendous verve and expertise and a real talent for mise en scène ... The portrait of Sorge himself that emerges is richly authentic” – William Boyd, New Statesman
“Gloriously readable … Every chapter of Matthews's superbly researched biography reads like something from an Eric Ambler thriller” – Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times
“A superb biography … More than a hundred books have been written about him and this is undoubtedly the best: detailed, wry, sympathetic and occasionally oddly moving” – Ben Macintyre, The Times
“A vividly told story, thoroughly researched and well-crafted ... I love a thrilling spy story, especially one as superbly narrated as this, full of Bond-like drama about Sorge's brushes with death, his love of fast cars and women ... A highly relevant book for today” – Financial Times
Owen Matthews is a writer, historian and journalist. He is a former Moscow and Istanbul Bureau Chief for Newsweek magazine. His first book on Russian history was Stalin's Children, a family memoir, shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Books Award. His book Glorious Misadventures was shortlisted for the Pushkin House book prize in 2014. He is most recently author of a thriller set in the Soviet Union, Black Sun (2019).
Twitter @owenmatth
A link to the Zoom event will be sent out 24 hours before the start time.
A link to the Zoom meeting will sent out 24 hours before the start time.
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