The intrigue and espionage underpinning the Cold War has provided many authors with inspiration over the years. Historian and author Oskar Jensen picks his favourites.
A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré
I have to start with Le Carré, it’s the law. Of his many great novels, my pick is this intimate, downbeat, semi-autobiographical exploration of what makes a spy – and unmakes a man.
The Third Man by Graham Greene
Who knew that Greene wrote this novella as the starting point for the film? Not me, until recently, but with the zeal of a convert I urge you to seek it out. Greene’s at his best with shorter fiction, as The End of the Affair makes amply clear.
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
An antidote to the very masculine, gritty, British works that define the Cold War genre. This brilliant recent novel is about love and secrets in the last years of East Berlin, and shows us how rounded – and complicated – life could be on the other side of the Wall.
Single Spies by Alan Bennett
Technically this is cheating as it’s a book made up of two plays, both about members of the Cambridge spy ring. By turns melancholic and laugh-out-loud funny, they’re up there with Bennett’s best work – and the second, starring Anthony Blunt, speaks beautifully to my own Helle’s Hound.
- Author Scott Anderson on the last CIA survivor of the Cold War
- No, the Cold War hasn’t ended. It may have only just begun
- Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd review – edge-of-your-seat Cold War escapism
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming
Problematic, absurd, chauvinist, downright ridiculous – so why does the ending hit so hard every time? It’s testament to Fleming’s skill as a writer that something as schlocky as James Bond can bring forth real emotional reactions.
