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Jul. 22nd, 2022 06:49 pmI read half of Ben Macintyre's latest, Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy, while I was traveling last month, and then the e-book was cruelly ripped away from me in unrenewable fashion by the library [because of my library crimes, which I could not address while on vacation.]
Anyway, now I have addressed my library crimes, so I finished it last week and enjoyed it very much! It's kind of an interesting contrast to Macintyre's other books -- most of them spend a lot of time emphasizing the absurdist human detail and banal minutiae and foolish mistakes of spycraft, which is a large part of the reason why I like them. They're very funny! One has the sense of Macintyre sitting there with a twinkle in his eye telling you all his favorite anecdotes, inviting you to have a little chuckle at the expense of these undoubtedly daring and yet rather silly secret agents.
Agent Sonya is in a different and more respectful key: Ursula Kuczynski-Hamburger-Beurton's life as told by Macintyre is High Romantic Drama, all throughout. Possibly this is because Burton was also a romantic novelist, and a major source for this book is her autobiography as well as her significantly autobiographical novels ... anyway, I'm not saying he's wrong, her life certainly merits the Romantic Drama treatment and is stuffed full of incredible trope material.
Young Ursula was an ardent German Jewish communist, who was recruited into the USSR's spy network while living in Shanghai with her (also Jewish, but less politically committed) husband in the 1930s, and
( I will spoiler-cut the rest of this in case anyone wishes to read the book and preserve suspense )
As a sidenote, this is the second nonfiction book set in/around/related to Nazi Germany that I've read this year in which one of my grandfather's Ullstein uncles makes a cameo appearance. Mildly disconcerting to suddenly see them popping up everywhere!
Anyway, now I have addressed my library crimes, so I finished it last week and enjoyed it very much! It's kind of an interesting contrast to Macintyre's other books -- most of them spend a lot of time emphasizing the absurdist human detail and banal minutiae and foolish mistakes of spycraft, which is a large part of the reason why I like them. They're very funny! One has the sense of Macintyre sitting there with a twinkle in his eye telling you all his favorite anecdotes, inviting you to have a little chuckle at the expense of these undoubtedly daring and yet rather silly secret agents.
Agent Sonya is in a different and more respectful key: Ursula Kuczynski-Hamburger-Beurton's life as told by Macintyre is High Romantic Drama, all throughout. Possibly this is because Burton was also a romantic novelist, and a major source for this book is her autobiography as well as her significantly autobiographical novels ... anyway, I'm not saying he's wrong, her life certainly merits the Romantic Drama treatment and is stuffed full of incredible trope material.
Young Ursula was an ardent German Jewish communist, who was recruited into the USSR's spy network while living in Shanghai with her (also Jewish, but less politically committed) husband in the 1930s, and
( I will spoiler-cut the rest of this in case anyone wishes to read the book and preserve suspense )As a sidenote, this is the second nonfiction book set in/around/related to Nazi Germany that I've read this year in which one of my grandfather's Ullstein uncles makes a cameo appearance. Mildly disconcerting to suddenly see them popping up everywhere!
