Littell, Robert

Woodstock. 2002. April 2002. Overlook Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 1585671975. 894 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration John Tenniel. keywords: CIA Literature America Mystery . FROM THE PUBLISHER - For his thirteenth novel, Robert Littell creates an engrossing, mulitgenerational, wickedly nostalgic yet utterly candid saga bringing to life, through a host of characters - historical and imagined - the nearly 50 years of this secretive, complex and powerful organization. At the heart of the novel, a stunningly conceived mole hunt involving such rivals and allies as the MI6, KGB, and Mossad concentrates the action. Racing across a canvas that spans the legendary Berlin Base in the 1950s - the front line of the simmering Cold War - to the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, the Afghan war, the Gorbachev putsch, and other major theatres of operation for the CIA, The Company tells a thrilling story of the passions and frailties of agents imprisoned in doublelives, the heartache of those who know terrible secrets and dreaded terrible scenarios, and the rightheadedness and wrongheadedness of incredibly dedicated men and women fighting an enemy that was amoral, elusive, formidable. In a style that is intelligent, ironic and saturated with fascinating insider detail, Littell tells it like it was: CIA agents, fighting not only the good fight against foreign enemies, but sometimes the bad one as well, with the ends justifying such means as CIA-organized assassinations, covert wars, kidnappings, and toppling of legitimate governments. Littell also brilliantly lays bare the warring within The Company to add another dimension to the spy vs. spy game that absorbed the lifetimes of countless agents: the battles between the counterintelligence agents behind the desks in Washington, like the utterly obsessive real-life mole hunter James Angleton, and the covert action boys in the field, like The Company's Harvey Torriti - the Sorcerer - a brilliant and brash rule breaker and dirty tricks expert who fights fire with fire, and his Apprentice, Jack McAuliffe, recruited fresh out of Yale, who learns both tradecraft and the hard truths of life in the field. inventory #32128 ISBN: 1585671975.