Word: berlins
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When Lothar de Maiziere became East Germany's Prime Minister, he didn't even have a working telephone. So I would have to send somebody from West Berlin to see him, or he would have to go to West Berlin and phone me. That was right after Easter. Since then we have completed a state treaty. Had you told me this a year ago, I would have said you were crazy. It's a crazy time, but also a fantastic time. I think of it as a blessing, in a way. And, of course, it is the fulfillment...
...Should Berlin be the capital of a united Germany...
...Everyone knows that I am an old supporter of Berlin. But this subject does not have to be dealt with now. It will be debated in an all-German parliament. The decision on a capital cannot be made as long as Soviet troops are deployed there. The Rhine will flow for a long time until this question is raised. If that were our only problem, we would have no problems...
...past several months, readers and publishers have been mourning the end of the cold war. Fine for the future of mankind, of course, but it means curtains for that sturdy subindustry, the espionage thriller. Goodbye to the Berlin Wall? A bitter thought. And what of double agents? No one still believes their entrapments occurring in the Middle East, where messages are not coded but exploded...
McEwan's story is set in Berlin in 1955, when the cold war was in full swing. The innocent of the title is Leonard Marnham, 25, a British post-office technician who is drafted into an undercover operation in which the allies are cooperating. And undercover is the accurate word; they are digging a tunnel in the Russian sector to pick up Soviet signals. Leonard loves his work. After living a cramped life in Tottenham, he relishes the rooms "big as meadows" in his government-issue flat and the hip manners of his co-workers. He soon learns that...