American Spy: A Novel Paperback – March 17, 2020 by Lauren Wilkinson

Description

Author: Wilkinson Lauren

Brand: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Color: Gold

Edition: Reprint

Package Dimensions: 21x203x234

Number Of Pages: 320

Release Date: 17-03-2020

Details: Product Description
“American Spy updates the espionage thriller with blazing originality.”—Entertainment Weekly“There has never been anything like it.”—Marlon James, GQ“So much fun . . . Like the best of John le Carré, it’s extremely tough to put down.”—NPRNAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • Entertainment Weekly • Esquire • BuzzFeed • Vulture • Real Simple • Good Housekeeping • The New York Public LibraryWhat if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love?

It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Sankara is doing for his country. Yes, even though she is still grieving the mysterious death of her sister, whose example led Marie to this career path in the first place. Yes, even though a furious part of her suspects she’s being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent.

In the year that follows, Marie will observe Sankara, seduce him, and ultimately have a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American.

Inspired by true events—Thomas Sankara is known as “Africa’s Che Guevara”—
American Spy knits together a gripping spy thriller, a heartbreaking family drama, and a passionate romance. This is a face of the Cold War you’ve never seen before, and it introduces a powerful new literary voice.

NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD • Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

“Spy fiction plus allegory, and a splash of pan-Africanism. What could go wrong? As it happens, very little. Clever, bracing, darkly funny, and really, really good.”
—Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Inspired by real events, this espionage thriller ticks all the right boxes, delivering a sexually charged interrogation of both politics and race.”
—Esquire

“Echoing the stoic cynicism of Hurston and Ellison, and the verve of Conan Doyle,
American Spy lays our complicities—political, racial, and sexual—bare. Packed with unforgettable characters, it’s a stunning book, timely as it is timeless.”
—Paul Beatty, Man Booker Prizewinning author of The Sellout
Review
“An expertly written spy thriller . . . that tackles issues of politics, race and gender . . . Like the best of John le Carré, it’s extremely tough to put down. It marks the debut of an immensely talented writer who’s refreshingly unafraid to take risks, and has the skills to make those risks pay off.”
—NPR

“For the novel’s engaging intelligence and serious reckoning with the world’s postwar order, Wilkinson deserves the comparisons to John le Carré she’s already receiving. But in bringing a virtually unheard-from fictional viewpoint to espionage literature, she has reinvigorated the genre.”
—Time

“Lauren Wilkinson’s
American Spy, inspired by true events, is a thrilling, original read.”
—Real Simple

“It might seem hyperbolic to say that this book is riveting and thrilling from the very first page, except that it totally is. . . . It’s a refreshing take on an espionage story—No icy Russian tundra! A black female spy!—that’s sexy and suspenseful in equal measure.”
—Samantha Irby, Marie Claire

“Wilkinson takes readers down a path of danger, seduction and patriotism.”
—Essence

“Lauren Wilkinson reminds us of a less-covered side of the Cold War with her debut set in 1986 Afr