This is a golden age for spy biographies. Almost every month there is another fascinating portrait of an agent who fought or supported one of the great totalitarian philosophies of the 20th century. I think it is fair to say, though, that no matter how many of those stories get told, none will be as absolutely belief-beggaring as that of Richard Sorge ... Owen Matthews has tremendous fun with Sorge’s life, which is so packed with incident as to be barely credible ... magnificently written ... Stalin didn’t deserve Sorge, and these poor women deserved far better than Sorge too. An Impeccable Spy is packed with humour and insight and all served up with a rare lightness of touch. Ben Macintyre and John le Carré fans alike will find themselves very much at home.
Owen Matthews has rescued Soviet espionage from the prison of the Cambridge Five, and taken it from the tedious and mundane to the intrepid and dauntless with an exhilarating mix of fast women, motorbikes and alcohol ... An Impeccable Spy is based on sets of Russian archives previously unavailable but which Matthews has mined. It’s difficult to imagine who could have done more to introduce Sorge to the West.
Although there are already several books about him, Sorge ought to be much better known. As the journalist Owen Matthews writes in the introduction to his gloriously readable biography, he was irresistibly fascinating, 'an idealistic communist and a cynical liar', a 'pedant, a drunk, and a womaniser ...addicted to risk, a braggart, often wildly indisciplined'. ... Every chapter of Matthews’s superbly researched biography reads like something from an Eric Ambler thriller ... In retrospect, the most extraordinary thing about Sorge’s career is that it took so long for anybody to realise he was a spy.
So much for the myth but, as ever, the truth—or as close as we can get to the truth—is infinitely more compelling, as this fascinating biography makes clear ... Owen Matthews tells the story of Sorge’s extraordinary life with tremendous verve and expertise and a real talent for mise en scène. Shanghai in the 1930s and prewar Tokyo, Sorge’s stamping grounds, come vividly alive in these pages and the portrait of Sorge himself that emerges is richly authentic, giving real credence to the title’s unequivocal claim: for all his feet of clay, Richard Sorge was indeed an impeccable spy.
In An Impeccable Spy, Owen Matthews captures all the drama of Sorge’s story, and he has mined Russian and Japanese archives to provide his readers with what is now the standard work on Sorge. This is much more than a book for spy buffs, though. Jargon is avoided, the complexities of Soviet, German, Chinese and Japanese politics and infighting of the time are skilfully navigated and the personalities brought vividly to life. With this book as our evidence, we can say that Sorge was an impeccable spy, and also that Matthews is an impeccable biographer.
Sorge’s story remains largely unknown to the Western world, but that’s likely to change with a remarkable new biography ... It’s the first comprehensive English biography on the spy in 20 years, and the first to include Russian sources ... The narrative delivers on several fronts. It enthralls as a comprehensive study of Sorge ... More than just the study of one man, however, Matthews’ work resonates due to his meticulous recreation of the people and contexts that colored Sorge’s wild orbit ... It’s an absorptive read into the political past with uncomfortable parallels to our present ... the book also entertains. Add Matthews’ journalistic eye for detail, historian’s emphasis on context and creative turn of phrase...and it’s no wonder it was named one of The Times’ of London’s most anticipated nonfiction books of 2019 ... Long heralded in the espionage world, Sorge may finally gain recognition with a wider audience. It’s about time, thanks to this impeccable new biography.
There isn’t much new material in An Impeccable Spy, with the exception of Stalin’s crude marginal notes on the Sorge file, but it does confirm and expand on information included in earlier accounts, some of it from the records of Soviet military intelligence, which haven’t been made generally available ... The short biographical sketch of [Jan Karlovich] Berzin in An Impeccable Spy contains some mistakes, but Matthews’s most important error is to seek to distinguish Berzin from the people he recruited. They, he claims, were idealists, dreamers, intellectuals, well-meaning types. Berzin, in contrast, was a ruthless, violent protégé of Dzerzhinsky, head of the much feared Cheka. Wrong. All the major achievements of the Fourth Department, as Soviet military intelligence came to be known (penetration of the British Foreign Office and intelligence in the 1920s, the creation of the Rote Kapelle, or Red Orchestra, which had spies in the highest echelons of the German military both in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, and Sorge’s astonishing successes in Japan in the 1930s), were planned in detail by Berzin.
Sorge’s combination of recklessness and coolness under pressure, along with his reputation as an inexhaustible lover with dozens of conquests, has generated numerous volumes about his exploits. By building on those studies (which rely heavily on reporting from Japan) and carefully researching the Russian side of the story, Mr. Matthews, who has worked as a journalist for the Moscow Times and Newsweek, offers a fine addition to the literature of this remarkable man.... On occasion, Mr. Matthews overstates his case...Still, Mr. Matthews is right that Sorge’s actions had a huge impact.
... reads similar to the compelling espionage mysteries from John Le Carre and others. Author Owen Matthews narrates the life of famed spy Sorge in a compelling manner, highlighting the good, bad, and ugly of Sorge’s life. Sorge is viewed as a tragic hero, flawed but loyal to his country, even when his country appeared to turn on him. A masterful biography.
Owen Matthews tells this story well, with an eye for anecdote and character, and with the help of a vast range of sources. Like those before him, he is fascinated by Sorge the man – his charisma, his drinking, his womanizing, his sheer ruthlessness ... For those who wonder whether individuals can make a difference to history, the case of Richard Sorge will always supply a kind of answer.
Sorge’s is the tale of a deeply flawed chancer who lived his private and public life very close to the edge but who held fast to his ideological convictions, in spite of many moments of depression and loneliness. It deserves a wider audience than it has had so far. There are few books in English on Sorge, the best being Stalin’s Spy by my former Guardian colleague, Robert Whymant (1996). He had the advantage of interviewing people who knew Sorge intimately, including Ishii and one of Sorge’s German girlfriends. Coming later when no witnesses remained alive, Owen Matthews builds on Whymant’s material, as well as on a formidable archive. A Russian-speaker, he also uses several Russians’ memoirs. He tells the dramatic story well, not least the final twist.
Sorge’s dramatic story is well-known. Several biographies have been written; a film was made in France. Owen Matthews, though, is the first to use newly available sources in the former USSR, including KGB archives. It is a vividly told story, thoroughly researched and well-crafted ... Ian Fleming called Sorge 'the most formidable spy in history'; John le Carré thought him 'impeccable'. But was he? In the big picture he failed. Matthews is good at explaining why. The Germans invaded and more than 20m Russians died in the war. However brilliant and fascinating, Sorge couldn’t find a way to prevent it. He was defeated by a problem spies have faced from the Battle of Actium to modern-day Iraq. Often leaders hear only what they want to hear and act on information they find politically useful to them. As such this is a highly relevant book for today.
Matthews has few illusions about his subject — ‘a bad man who became a great spy’ — or the challenge that he faces in exhuming him ... Drawing on the Soviet military intelligence archives in Podolsk, Matthews tells ‘for the first time’ the Soviet side of this eye-rubbing story. The Sorge that painstakingly emerges is a papier-mâché German-Russian doll composed of tiny and frequently self-contradicting fragments ... Readers who hunger for some humane, informed reaction to the horror unleashed by Stalin, and to an articulation of Sorge’s own disillusion, will wait in vain.
Former war correspondent Matthews... examines Soviet spymaster Richard Sorge in this vivid biography ... his exhaustive, crisply written portrait of 'one of the greatest spies who ever lived' will fascinate espionage fans.
