An engrossing, multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic yet utterly entertaining and candid saga, bringing to life through a host of characters - historical and imagined - nearly fifty years of this secretive and powerful organization.

Intelligent and ironic, Littell tells it like it was: CIA agents fighting not only the `good fight' against foreign enemies, but sometimes the bad fight too. The ends justify such means as CIA-organized assassinations, covert wars, kidnappings, and the toppling of legitimate governments. Behind every manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, however, one question remains, which spans the length of the book . . . Who is the mole within the CIA?

An astonishing novel that captures the life-and-death struggle of an entire generation of CIA operatives during a long Cold War.

`The best American spy writer currently at work'

Daily Telegraph