Brandenburg - Henry Porter

The Stasi was among the most sophisticated intelligence organisations in the world, but by the end of the 1980s the Orwellian state of East Germany was collapsing around it. The special squads of armed officers, the torture chambers in the Stasi jail, the hundreds of thousands of informers could do nothing to prevent the rebellion that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is in the context of these last few paranoid weeks of the Communist world, when a population that had been oppressed for nearly sixty years found the will to rise up, that BRANDENBURG is set. Its hero is Dr Rudolf Rosenharte, an academic from Dresden and agent for MI6, who must face a stark choice when his security is compromised: to jump ship and defect to the West, leaving his beloved family to the mercies of the Stasi, or return to East Germany to carry out a dangerous assignment under the Stasi's suspicious eye. Robert Harland, from A SPY'S LIFE and EMPIRE STATE, is Rosenharte's MI6 controller ...

Henry Porter has written for most national broadsheet newspapers. He was editor of the Atticus column on the SUNDAY TIMES, moving to set up the SUNDAY CORRESPONDENT magazine in 1988. He contributes commentary and reportage to the GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, EVENING STANDARD and SUNDAY TELEGRAPH. He is the British editor of VANITY FAIR, and lives in London with his wife and two daughters.