The Turn-Around

This book was recommended to me by a friend who knew Vladimir Volkoff when he was living in the USA. An additional selling point was knowing that the book had won the 1980 French prize for literature. That said -- I'm not sure I would recommend this book to someone unfamiliar with either Russian or Russian-Orthodox culture. The translation is stiff, and doesn't help the "flow" of the book at all. So why four stars? Because once you get over the awkward translation, the plot is fascinating. Told in the first person by a member of the French intelligence community -- a thoroughly French son of Russian emigres parents -- it details an intelligence operation designed to entrap a highly-placed KGB spy into turning counter-intelligence for the French. To do this, French intelligence enlists the help of a struggling actress, also a Frenchwoman of Russian descent. Her instructions are to get the KGB operative to fall in love with her, then compromise him in such a way that he cannot refuse to work for the French. The plot twists in a way completely unforeseen by either the narrator or the reader, and leaves the reader pondering questions that don't come up in one's head through the ordinary Cold-War genre. To me, that alone makes slogging through the translation a worthwhile endeavor.