Joseph Kanon finds mystery in Istanbul after WWII

'Istanbul Passage' by Joseph Kanon
'Istanbul Passage' by Joseph Kanon
Book cover courtesy of publisher

In Joseph Kanon's "Istanbul Passage," nearly everyone has secrets. American expatriate Leon Bauer is a tobacco salesman and sometime spy. His German Jewish wife Anna smuggled Jewish refugees to Palestine.

Bauer is to complete one more job for Allied intelligence, but the job goes awry and a man ends up dead, pulling Bauer into territory Kanon describes as "the fringe of a clandestine world, then shifting from the black and white struggle of WWII to the grayer, murkier area of the Cold War."

LEARN MORE ABOUT KANON'S "ISTANBUL PASSAGE":

'Istanbul': A Twisted Tale Of Foreign Espionage
NPR interviews Kanon about the book: "I find that ultimately what you want to talk about is: How do we live? How do we make these moral choices, and where do we draw the personal line of your own moral limits?"

Eyes Everywhere
The New York Times reviews the book: "With this neat twist, Kanon pulls us into his noir world, where men's motives may be as shabby as the dilapidated city that surrounds them, and no one is quite all he seems."

"Istanbul Passage" excerpt
An excerpt from the book.

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