An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin?s Master Agent: MINT SIGNED and PUBLICATION DAY DATED FIRST EDITION

Owen Matthews

ISBN 10: 1408857782 / ISBN 13: 9781408857786

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019

About this Item

A mint first printing in a likewise unclipped dust wrapper. Unread gift condition, SIGNED and Publication Day DATED 23/3/19 by Owen Matthews to the title page. An outstanding copy with superb attributes following The Daily Telegraph five star rating only a small limited stock now available. BOXED DESPATCH. Seller Inventory # ABE-1554135524451

Bibliographic Details

Title: An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin?s ...

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Publication Date: 2019

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: New

Dust Jacket Condition: New

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

'The most formidable spy in history' Ian Fleming

'A superb biography ... More than a hundred books have been written about him and this is undoubtedly the best' Ben Macintyre

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.

Like many great spies, Sorge was an effortless seducer, combining charm with ruthless manipulation. He did not have to go undercover to find out closely guarded state secrets - his victims willingly shared them. 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.

Never before has Sorge's story been told from the Russian side as well as the German and Japanese. Owen Matthews takes 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'.

Review:

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. Shanghai in the 1930s and prewar Tokyo, Sorge's stamping grounds, come vividly alive in these pages and 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 . Alive to Sorge's human flaws as much as to his professional competence, and with a salutary vein of anger running through it . 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)

Magnificently written . An Impeccable Spy is packed with humour and insight and all served up with a rare lightness of touch . Ben Macintyre and John le Carré fans alike will find themselves very much at home (Oliver Bullough Observer)

Vivid and revealing ... Within a few pages, it is clear that An Impeccable Spy is going to be a very good read ... Better than any previous biography (Christopher Andrew Literary Review)

A gripping human story with the complexity of a political thriller . An excellent history, which sheds new light on Sorge and his work. Unless something significant turns up about him in the German Nazi-era intelligence archives, it is likely to be the definitive work on him in English (Standpoint)

Brilliant ... A clear-eyed, deeply researched and finely-judged portrait (Saul David Telegraph)

[An] impressive biography . Matthews captures all the drama of Sorge's story . The complexities of Soviet, German and Japanese politics and infighting of the time are skilfully navigated and the personalities brought vividly to life. With this book as our evidence, we can say that Sorge was an impeccable spy, and also that Matthews is an impeccable biographer (Vin Arthey Scotsman)

Riveting ... An eye-rubbing story (Spectator)