Red Joan (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781609452049)

Inspired by the true story of a female spy, this is "an infectious page-turner, as crafty and nuanced and impassioned as any classic thriller" (The National).

Inspired by the true story of Melita Norwood, unmasked as the KGB's longest-serving British spy in 1999, at age eighty-seven, Red Joan centers on the deeply conflicted life of a young physicist during the Second World War.Talented and impressionable, Cambridge undergraduate Joan Stanley befriends the worldly Sonya, whose daring history is at odds with Joan's provincial upbringing. Joan also feels a growing attraction toward Leo, Sonya's mysterious and charismatic cousin. Sonya and Leo, known communist sympathizers with ties to Russia and Germany, interpret wartime loyalty in ways Joan can only begin to fathom.As nations throughout the continent fall to fascism, Joan is enlisted into an urgent project that will change the course of the war--and the world--forever. Risking both career and conscience, leaking information to the Soviets while struggling to maintain her own semblance of morality, Joan is caught at a crossroads in which all paths lead to the same endgame: the deployment of the atomic bomb.Life during wartime, however, is often ambiguous, and when--decades later--MI5 agents appear at her doorstep, Joan must reaffirm the cost of the choices she made and face the cold truth: our deepest secrets have a way of dragging down those we love most.
The basis of the film starring Judi Dench and Sophie Cookson, this is "a brilliant spy novel, with a] deft, involving plot . . . Tense, beautifully pitched, and very moving" (Marie Claire).

Author: Jennie Rooney
ISBN-10: 1609452046
ISBN-13: 9781609452049
Publisher: Europa Editions
Language: English
Published: 07/01/2014
Pages: 390
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.30w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 05/05/2014
Library Journal 06/15/2014 pg. 83
Entertainment Weekly 06/27/2014 pg. 67
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2014
New York Times Book Review 09/21/2014 pg. 26