Title: Brandenburg
Author: Henry Porter
Rating:
3.5 stars out of 5Publisher: Orion
Copyright: 2005
Pages: 564
Keywords: spy, thriller
Reading period: 25 July-3 August, 2008
Rudi Rosenharte is an East German academic,
reluctantly working for the Stasi,
in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The Stasi are holding his twin brother, Konrad, hostage.
Rudi's desperate to get Konrad and his family out,
and he's recruited by British Intelligence.
Rudi ends up keeping four intelligence services at bay,
as he walks along an ever more precarious tightrope.
The plot is, of course, implausible.
The book brings the sheer nastiness of a police state to life,
and shows the East German state collapsing as it celebrates its
fortieth anniversary.