The bestselling author returns on June 6, 2017 in America and June 1, 2017 in the UK with a fast-paced and richly imagined novel about an American spy, the Cold War’s most notorious defector, who fled Washington for the safety of Moscow-but never lost his talent for betrayal. Defectors is the gripping story of one family torn apart by their divided loyalties and a revealing look at Moscow at the height of the Cold War and the community of American and British defectors forced to make it their home. Kept apart from ordinary Russians, closely monitored by the KGB, granted special privileges but never trusted, these former spies now live under a kind of permanent house arrest in the society for which they have sacrificed everything, traitors who managed to escape one prison only to find themselves locked in another.

In 1949, Frank Weeks, fair-haired boy of the newly formed CIA, was exposed as a Communist spy and vanished behind the Iron Curtain. Now, twelve years later, he has written his memoirs, a KGB-approved project certain to be an international bestseller, and has asked his brother Simon, a respected New York publisher, to travel to Moscow to edit the manuscript. It’s a reunion Simon both longs for and dreads. The book is sure to be filled with mischief and misinformation, Frank’s motives suspect, the CIA hostile. But the chance to see Frank, his adored older brother, proves irresistible. And at first Frank is still Frank-the same easy charm, the same jokes, the same bond of affection that transcends ideology. Then Simon begins to glimpse another Frank, still capable of deceit, still actively working for “the Service,” as he’s pulled into Frank’s twilit world, caught between the KGB and the CIA in a fatal scheme that pits the brothers against each other, like scorpions in a bottle, safe unless one of them attacks. But one always does.

“With his remarkable emotional precision and mastery of tone, Kanon transcends the form. In its subtly romanticized treatment of compromised lives, this book is even better than his terrific previous effort, Leaving Berlin (2015). A blend of Spy vs. Spy and sibling vs. sibling (not since le Carré’s A Perfect Spy has there been a family of spooks to rival this one), Kanon reaffirms his status as one of the very best writers in the genre.”
– Kirkus Reviews

Read full review here…