The true story of the most important female spy in history, a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer who went from surveilling the Nazis to the West during her 1940s stint in the English village of Cotswolds, where she seemed to fit right in as a married and unassuming mother of three.
We have at last, in Ben Macintyre’s Agent Sonya, the tale of a fully fleshed-out female spy. Not a femme fatale with a tiny pistol in her purse ... a real-life heroine worthy of his gifts as John le Carré’s nonfiction counterpart ... It boggles the mind how a woman with so many domestic responsibilities—a husband and two children—could find time for spy drops and transmitting coded messages. But Sonya was the consummate multitasker, now cooking dinner, now cooking up explosives to blow up railways. Domesticity was the perfect cover ... The flat-footedness and sexism of the British secret services is one of Macintyre’s entertaining subplots ... Macintyre gives an enthralling account of the territory that exists between devotion to the cause and sheer love of the game. But hovering over this tale is a question that Macintyre deals with only in passing ... Sonya excused brutalities far too lightly, and never disavowed the faith. She sacrificed everything—family, friends and morality—for a dream built on lies.
Kuczynski’s remarkable life is the subject of Ben Macintyre’s latest book, a biography-cum-history that comes with a gripping narrative, a beguiling protagonist and a sensational denouement. The manner in which Kuczynski survived the extreme hazards of living life on the edge will keep you glued to your armchair ... Macintyre’s page-turner is a dazzling portrait of a flawed yet driven individual who risked everything (including her children) for the cause. Drawn from unpublished memoirs and letters, plus Kuczynski’s voluminous writings, it reveals an idealist addicted to danger. Above all it is the portrait of a lucky survivor.
When Ben Macintyre’s name is on the cover you know you are in for a thrilling ride. He’s a master at unearthing the daring and deceits hidden deep in that extraordinary half century in which Britain fought first Nazi Germany and then the cold war ... But in Agent Sonya, he has pulled off his most remarkable trick: he leaves us admiring, and even cheering for, the woman at the heart of his story, someone who not only wanted to destroy our democracy but helped Russia get a nuclear bomb. She is the strongest character of all in Macintyre’s bestselling series of wartime tales ... I raced through the pages to keep up with the plot. But this really is fact not fiction, made all the more gripping by the photographs that have survived from almost every part of Sonya’s career.
