The valley of unknowing - Philip Sington

Bruno Krug, celebrated author and secret Stasi informer, is ready to confess...

In the twilight years of Communist East Germany, Bruno Krug, writer, womaniser and People's Champion of Art and Culture, falls for Theresa Aden, a music student from the West. But Theresa has also caught the eye of a cocky young scriptwriter who delights in satirising Krug's latter-day offerings.

Asked to appraise a mysterious manuscript, Bruno finds himself in a quandary when the anonymous author turns out to be none other than his rival. Disconcertingly, the book is good - very good. But there is hope for the older man: the unwelcome masterpiece is also dangerously political. The enamoured Krug decides that if his affair with Theresa is to prove more than a fling, he must employ a small deception. But in the Workers' and Peasants' State, knowing the deceiver from the deceived, the betrayer from the betrayed, isn't just difficult: it can be a matter of life and death.

The Valley of Unknowing is both a moving and entertaining love story and a seductive thriller, one that pits the past against the future, commerce against creativity, and art against life.