Leaving Berlin

Berlin 1948. Almost four years after the war's end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the west, a blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies. In the east, the early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the compromises of the Cold War. Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witch hunts.

Joseph Kanon