Why a Booktrail?
Cold War: Ian McEwan’s writing should not be missed and his treatment of what is a sensitive subject is a must read.
The Innocent
What you need to know before your trail
The cold war Berlin of 1955 is like no place Leonard Markham has ever experienced. It’s a divided city, stuck between East and West, past and present.
Leonard is part of a British-American surveillance team and works to escape the reality of his own boring and ordinary life. But his secret work gets him further involved with a world he does not fully understand or can fully control. Maria, a beautiful young woman introduces him to another world he has not experienced before – that of love and sex.
Shedding his innocence layer by layer, he will soon have to decide just how much of his innocence he is willing to shed.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
Berlin in the 1950s is not a place that many of us would want to visit for real even if it were possible, but you can see it on a walkabout if you know where to look. This book is a good guide.
The setting may be the mechanics and machinations of the Cold War but the real emotional landscape is the human condition and more importantly, the unpredictability of human behaviour. Berlin in the 1950s is a gruesome place and some of the detailed and we mean detailed descriptions in the book mean that you really don’t want to read this book whilst eating or just about to eat. You’ll be spending time in somewhat ‘unique’ surroundings like a tunnel!
The rest of the city is bomb ridden streets and a cold harsh reality. This is the Berlin of wartime after all and the scars across the city are evident. The cold war is central to the setting of course and this is what is described in the blurb but it takes second place to the story of a love affair and a spy operation. The first half of the novel actually reads as a cold war thriller but then bam! it changes and the second half is a rather macabre black comedy of sorts. Graphic and not to recreated for anyone!
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Web: ianmcewan.com
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