PositiveHerald Scotsman (UK)A new perspective on the dictator ... Roberts uses the library as a way in to a wider discussion of Soviet arts and culture.
Helena Merriman
RaveThe ScotsmanHelena Merriman’s book is a tour de force ... The book focuses on the tunnel, and the story is enhanced by the other strands that Merriman weaves in. Her chapters on the East German State Police, the Stasi, are breathtaking ... The chapters on the day of the escape are possibly the most suspenseful I have ever read, in fiction as well as nonfiction.
Rebecca Donner
RaveThe Scotsman (UK)Despite its ostensibly forbidding subject matter this is a thrilling and inspiring book. It is a treasure trove for lovers of biography, new writing and the history of the Third Reich. Donner’s style is startling with sometimes short, even single word sentences ... there is some invented dialogue, neither of which this reader is entirely comfortable with, but the effect is to create the atmospherics of the period, and to help show us how Mildred Harnack saw the world. The facts tell us that Mildred was not an easy person; Donner captures this and uses her sources masterfully ... The book gives fresh insight into the so-called Red Orchestra of Soviet spies in Nazi Germany, telling the story from the bottom up rather than from the top down, which has been the usual approach.
