 The Good German
by Joseph Kanon
Paperback movie tie-in edition / published November 2006
Picador
Now a major motion picture starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey McGuire.
With World War II finally coming to an ending, Jake Geismar, former Berlin correspondent for CBS, has managed to wangle one of the coveted slots for the Potsdam Conference. His assignment: a series of articles on the American occupation of postwar Berlin. His personal agenda: to find Lena, the German mistress he left behind at the outbreak of the war. When he stumbles onto a murder -- an American soldier has washed up on a lakeshore on the conference grounds -- he thinks he has found the key that will unlock his Berlin story. What he finds instead is a larger story of corruption and intrigue reaching deep into the heart of the occupation and a city not only physically but morally devastated, where children scavenge for food in the rubble, sex can be had for a cigarette, and the black market is the only means of survival.
Berlin at zero hour is like nowhere else -- a tragedy, and a feverish party after the end the world. And nothing is simple-not the murder of a soldier and not any of the lives, American and German, that Jake encounters as he tries solve it. More unsolvable still is the larger crime that hangs over everything in 1945, a crime so huge it seems beyond punishment.
At once a murder mystery, a love story, and a riveting portrait of a unique time and place, The Good German is a historical thriller of first rank.
Praise for The Good German
“[Kanon] is fast approaching the complexity and relevance not just of le Carré and Greene but even of Orwell: provocative, fully realized fiction that explores, as only fiction can, the reality of history as it is lived by individual men and women.”
--Neil Gordon, The New York Times Book Review
“As he did in Los Alamos, Kanon demonstrates an eerie mastery of the evocative historical detail . . . You can feel the shattered glass crunching beneath your feet as you read. You can smell the smoke-scorched broken bricks . . . Kanon is as ambitious a novelist as he is a gifted one.”
--Ken Ringle, The Washington Post
“Kanon spins an ever-more-riveting thriller that is bolstered by vivid period detail, genuine characters, and a thoughtful exploration of the many layers of postwar German guilt.”
--Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly
“Kanon makes after-the-fall Berlin a real and haunting place . . . [He] serves up a potent mix of intrigue, cynicism and an occasional flash of idealism.”
--Andrew Nagorski, The Los Angeles Times
“Kanon is the heir apparent to Graham Greene; he writes of moral quandaries that are real and not created to drive a plot. A multilayered story, beautifully told.”
--Robin W. Winks, The Boston Globe
Paperback (movie tie-in) | October 2006 | $14.00 | 0-312-42608-9
Mass Market Paperback (movie tie-in) | October 2006 | $7.99 | 0-312-94210-9
Paperback | June 2002 | $14.00 | 0-312-42126-5
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