Robert Littell - Young Philby: A Novel

Unabridged, 96 kbps, Read by John Lee
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/young-philby-robert-littell/1108946294

Overview
A Kirkus Best Fiction Book of 2012

A Kansas City Star Top Book the Year

When Kim Philby fled to Moscow in 1963, he became the most notorious double agent in the history of espionage. Recruited into His Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service at the beginning of World War II, he rose rapidly in the ranks to become the chief liaison officer with the CIA in Washington after the war. The exposure of other members of the group of British double agents known as the Cambridge Five led to the revelation that Philby had begun spying for the Soviet Union years before he joined the British intelligence service. He eventually fled to Moscow one jump ahead of British agents who had come to arrest him, and spent the last twenty-five years of his life in Russia.

In Young Philby, Robert Littell recounts the little-known story of the spy’s early years. Through the words of Philby’s friends and lovers, as well as his Soviet and English handlers, we follow the evolution of a mysteriously beguiling man who kept his masters on both sides of the Iron Curtain guessing about his ultimate loyalties. As each layer of ambiguity is exposed, questions surface: What made this infamous double (or should that be triple?) agent tick? And, in the end, who was the real Kim Philby?

Kirkus Reviews
A dizzying, "what if" take on (in)famous British spy Kim Philby. In 1963, Kim Philby, a member of British Intelligence, was exposed as a double agent working for Russia. The case continues to provide a mother lode for spy novels, and in this latest, Littell (The Stalin Epigram, 2009, etc.) spins the story even further, building to a finish that suggests the story still offers at least one more stunning "shoe drop." Littell's narrative follows the outlines of Philby's private and public lives, which here are inextricably linked. The story unfolds in a series of first-person accounts from friends, lovers and contacts who knew Philby at key junctures in his career as an agent. There's Litzi Friedman, who first puts callow but wary Philby in touch with the Russians when he visits Vienna; Guy Burgess, Philby's flamboyantly gay classmate at Cambridge, whom Philby enlists as a spy for the Soviets; Frances Doble, a film star who romances Philby as he reports on the Spanish Civil War for the London Times; and Philby's father, Harry St John Bridger Philby, aka "the Hajj." From these narratives emerges a mural of the history of espionage before, during and after World War II, as well as an in-depth portrait of Philby, who becomes a canny informant despite his fear of the sight of blood. The narrators speak with distinctive voices, yet the chapters are unified by the dark lens of Littell's mordant take on spies and their craft. As in The Company (2002), Littell shows particular skill at recreating pulse-quickening epic scenes of conflict--the Russian-backed uprising against Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, the war against fascist dictator Francisco Franco, and the horrors of Stalin's kangaroo courts and of Moscow prisons. Veteran Littell remains unbowed by commercial pressures to speed up the text. Elegantly written paragraphs and speeches running to half pages distinguish his work. A Cold-War spy novel for the top shelf.

Editorial Reviews
The Washington Post
Philby's career as a high-level British intelligence officer who was secretly passing secrets to his masters in Moscow has often been fictionalized, by authors as notable as John le Carré and Graham Greene. What Littell adds to the mix is an abundance of black humor as well as a suggestion—whispered about for years—that Philby, the infamous Soviet spy, might actually have been loyal to Britain all along, and it was therefore the Soviets who were fooled. That's a minority opinion, but it reflects Littell's view of espionage as a hall of mirrors…For readers who savor both history and absurdity, this fascinating novel is not to be missed, and I persist in my belief that Littell is one of the most underrated of American novelists.