A Clandestine Rendezvous with Joseph Kanon and Paul Vidich on the Legacy of John le Carré

$75

Includes 3 Featured Books & a Beverage

In stock

Thursday, 7:00 pm EDT November 9, 2023

The Center for Fiction Members Lounge

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Agents, you have your mission: join us in our top-secret headquarters (by day, our elegant Members Lounge) for a thrilling conversation between two masterful spy novelists, Joseph Kanon and Paul Vidich, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold—the groundbreaking tale that launched John le Carré’s career—and the enduring allure of the spy novel. Vidich and Kanon will explore the craft of this thrilling genre, including in their stunning new releases: Kanon’s The Berlin Exchange and Vidich’s Beirut Station. This is a can’t-miss event for any fan of spy fiction, and an exciting continuation of our beloved, intimate Literary Salon series.

Space is limited and the price of admission includes a glass of wine or non-alcoholic beverage from our Café & Bar; copies of each of the following spy thrillers: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The Berlin Exchange, and Beirut Station; and a special spy challenge of your own!

In Conversation

Joseph Kanon

Joseph Kanon

Joseph Kanon is the Edgar Award–winning author of The Accomplice, Defectors, Leaving Berlin, Istanbul Passage, Los Alamos, The Prodigal Spy, Alibi, Stardust, and The Good German, which was made into a major motion picture starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. He lives in New York City.
Paul Vidich

Paul Vidich

Paul Vidich is the acclaimed author of The Matchmaker, The Mercenary, The Coldest Warrior, An Honorable Man, and The Good Assassin. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, LitHub, CrimeReads, Fugue, the Nation, Narrative Magazine, and Wordriot. He lives in New York City.

Photo Credit: Bekka Palmer

Featured Books

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The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

By John le Carré

Published by Penguin Publishing Group

PURCHASE

The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carré’s career worldwide.

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service—with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.

Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.
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The Berlin Exchange

By Joseph Kanon

Published by Scribner

PURCHASE

Berlin, 1963. An early morning spy swap, not at the familiar setting for such exchanges, nor at Checkpoint Charlie, where international visitors cross into the East, but at a more discreet border crossing, usually reserved for East German VIPs. The Communists are trading two American students caught helping people to escape over the wall and an aging MI6 operative. On the other side of the trade: Martin Keller, a physicist who once made headlines, but who then disappeared into the English prison system. Keller’s most critical possession: his American passport. Keller’s most ardent desire: to see his ex-wife Sabine and their young son.

The exchange is made with the formality characteristic of these swaps. But Martin has other questions: Who asked for him? Who negotiated the deal? The KGB? He knows that nothing happens by chance. They want him for something. Not physics—his expertise is out of date. Something else, which he cannot learn until he arrives in East Berlin, when suddenly the game is afoot.

Intriguing and atmospheric, with action rising to a dangerous climax, The Berlin Exchange “expertly describes what happens when a disillusioned former agent tries to come in from the cold” (New York Times Book Review), confirming Kanon as “the greatest writer ever of historical espionage fiction” (Spybrary).

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Beirut Station

By Paul Vidich

Published by Pegasus Books

PURCHASE

Lebanon, 2006. The Israel-Hezbollah war is tearing Beirut apart: bombs are raining down, residents are scrambling to evacuate, and the country is on the brink of chaos.

In the midst of this turmoil, the CIA and Mossad are targeting a reclusive Hezbollah terrorist, Najib Qassem. Najib is believed to be planning the assassination of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is coming to Beirut in ten days to broker a cease-fire. The spy agencies are running out of time to eliminate the threat.

They turn to a young Lebanese-American CIA agent. Analise comes up with the perfect plan: she has befriended Qassem’s grandson as his English tutor, and will use this friendship to locate the terrorist and take him out. As the plan is put into action, though, Analise begins to suspect that Mossad has a motive of its own: exploiting the war’s chaos to eliminate a generation of Lebanese political leaders.

She alerts the agency but their response is for her to drop it. Analise is now the target and there is no one she can trust: not the CIA, not Mossad, and not the Lebanese government. And the one person she might have to trust—a reporter for the New York Times—might not be who he says he is… A tightly-wound international thriller, Beirut Station is Paul Vidich’s best novel to date.