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Agent Sonya: Lover, Mother, Soldier, Spy by [Ben MacIntyre]

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Ben Macintyre

Agent Sonya: Lover, Mother, Soldier, Spy Kindle Edition

by Ben MacIntyre (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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A TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'His best book yet' The Times

'Macintyre's page-turner is a dazzling portrait of a flawed yet driven individual who risked everything (including her children) for the cause' Sunday Times

DISCOVER THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF THE SPY WHO ALMOST KILLED HITLER - FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SPY AND THE TRAITOR

Ursula Kuczynski Burton was a spymaster, saboteur, bomb-maker and secret agent. Codenamed 'Agent Sonya', her story has never been told - until now.

Born to a German Jewish family, as Ursula grew, so did the Nazis' power. As a fanatical opponent of the fascism that ravaged her homeland, Ursula was drawn to communism as a young woman, motivated by the promise of a fair and peaceful society.

From planning an assassination attempt on Hitler in Switzerland, to spying on the Japanese in Manchuria, to preventing nuclear war (or so she believed) by stealing the science of atomic weaponry from Britain to give to Moscow, Ursula conducted some of the most dangerous espionage operations of the twentieth century.

In Agent Sonya, Britain's most acclaimed historian Ben Macintyre delivers an exhilarating tale that's as fast-paced as any fiction. It is the incredible story of one spy's life, a life that would alter the course of history . . .

'Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else' John Preston

'Macintyre has found a real-life heroine worthy of his gifts as John le Carré's nonfiction counterpart' New York Times

'This book is classic Ben Macintyre . . . quirky human details enliven every page' Spectator

Length: 386 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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The best true spy story I have ever read -- John le Carré on 'The Spy and the Traitor'

Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else. He has a remarkable ability to construct a narrative that is as taut and urgent as it is carefully nuanced. -- John Preston ― Evening Standard --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Ben Macintyre is the multimillion-copy bestselling author of books including Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat and A Spy Among Friends. He is a columnist and Associate Editor at The Times, and has worked as the newspaper's correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. He regularly presents BBC series based on his acclaimed books. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

ASIN : B0854JLPTM
Publisher : Penguin (17 September 2020)
Language : English
File size : 18624 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 386 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 4,061 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 2 in Intelligence & Espionage (Kindle Store)
- 4 in International Relations
- 4 in World War II Biographies & Memoirs

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602 ratings

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PFC

Another excellent Ben McIntyre true soy story

Reviewed in Australia on 22 October 2020

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Well written, a real life spy story with an unlikely main character, and a cast with cameos from a surprising range of well known figures from the period. A look at Weimar Germany, early 1930s Shanghai, World war 2 Switzerland and Britain from
a very different perspective.

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Barry Black

Great Book

Reviewed in Australia on 23 January 2021

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Couldn't put it down such detail of how the spying system works.

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Mairi Payten

Worth reading

Reviewed in Australia on 11 November 2020

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Great book as are all his books!

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Andrew West

Amazing

Reviewed in Australia on 11 October 2020

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Fantastic as are all his books!

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Brian McGrath

Lived experience of historical events

Reviewed in Australia on 19 November 2020

The story of Agent Sonya is a terrific read and a wonderful way to gain an appreciation of some of the characters and events that helped shape our history from the aftermath of First World War to the Cold War.

One person found this helpful

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Phil Webster

Stalin's "Agent Sonya"

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 September 2020

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Apparently The Times newspaper called this latest book by Ben Macintyre “His best book yet”. I’m afraid I don’t agree. I’ve read several of Macintyre’s previous “real life” spy stories, and he generally does a good job of grabbing your interest and pulling you along. But although this one is certainly interesting and informative in parts, I found that other parts of it dragged on too much. In particular, the detailed accounts of Agent Sonya’s personal life and relationships told me more than I really wanted to know.

In this book, I actually found the political background more interesting than the main espionage aspects of the history. In this political respect, the book tells the sad story of a woman’s descent from praiseworthy idealism to her becoming a spy, and an apologist, for Stalin’s tyrannical regime in Russia.

Like the more famous Kim Philby, Ursula Kuczynski (Agent Sonya) was motivated by political principles. She genuinely believed that by spying for the USSR she was advancing the cause of a fairer and more peaceful world. Like many others in the 1920s and 1930s she could see that capitalism was a system based on exploitation and inequality, a system which was dragging the world into economic crisis and war, and a system which was giving birth to the monstrosity of fascism. (We see similar developments today.)

It is understandable that in the early 1920s “Sonya” should be inspired by Russia. The 1917 Russian Revolution, led by Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, had been a genuine workers’ revolution, with working people exercising power through the “soviets” (elected workers’ councils). She also saw that the communists were the most determined opponents of fascism.

But by the late 1920s, before Kuczynski started to spy for the Russian GRU, the gains and democracy of the revolution had been destroyed by Stalin and the bureaucratic ruling class that had usurped power and turned Russia into a state capitalist tyranny.

Sonya’s tragedy is that she dedicated her life to a totalitarian state which called itself socialist, but which was just as exploitative a system as the one in the West. Perhaps there was some excuse at first for her being unaware of the true nature of the USSR, but she stuck loyally by the Stalinist regime even when its crimes could not be ignored, right through Stalin’s purges and mass murder, and right up until the eventual collapse of the state capitalist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe. (China’s, Cuba’s and North Korea’s state capitalist rulers still falsely claim to be “communist”.)

Genuine Marxists had long been advocating the slogan of “Neither Washington Nor Moscow But International Socialism”, and pointing out that “The Free World is not really free and the Communist World is not really communist”. But there was none of that for Kuczynski: she remained a loyal Stalinist.

33 people found this helpful

Grays

Easy reading.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 September 2020

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My Grandparents are mentioned within this book. Sadly the some of the facts relating to them are incorrect. The family were unaware of them being written about. Which is a shame as the author could of gained the correct information. Growing up hearing stories of the spy they once shared a house with.

18 people found this helpful

Lector noruego

Very little new material.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 October 2020

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Ben Macintyre seems to follow the storyline of Ruth Kuczinskis memoirs rather closely and somewhat uncritically. When they were published in the East German dictatorship, they were so obviously a tool of communist propaganda, designed to glorify the exploits of the author. (The so-called complete edition published in 2006 in Berlin is in this respect little better than the Stasi-approved version of 1977)
By sticking to the main story of Kuczinski's life as it was outlined in "Sonjas Report", Macintyre wastes too much space on the Chinese adventures of this diehard communist compared to her activities in England, where her basic actions - apart from being the operator of an illegal radio - seem to have been bicycling across Oxfordshire. The suspicions against Roger Hollis are treated rather summarily, but that is hardly surprising since MI5 is generally - with few exceptions- presented as a bunch of bungling incompetents.
There are almost a hundred files the Kuczinskis in the Stasi archives in Berlin. Surely it should have been possible to present a fuller picture of "Sonjas" life in East Germany after she returned in 1950.
All in all this book presents a far too positive picture of this diehard Stalinist, who remained one until well after the wall had been torn down.

12 people found this helpful

millhall

The life of a zealot.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 October 2020

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This is a monumental work. I find it impossible to imagine the hours and hours of work which went into the completing the book. Testament to the scale of the effort involved is the length of the bibliography and the long list of acknowledged helpers. Despite it's length and unending attention to detail the book does not drag. The fact that the central character dominates the script is a bonus, not a disappointment. Ursula emerges as a quite remarkable woman whose upbringing in pre - war privileged Berlin Jewish society never blinds her to the horrors of fascism and drives her to almost lifelong support for the ideals of communism. Her life is truly remarkable and Macintyre does not spare any of the details. Lover, mother, soldier spy does summarise the content, and that sequence is not coincidental. The background character sketches of Britain's famous spies - Philby etc - add focus to the story and I almost laughed at the blundering incompetence of Britain's spy catchers. A marvellous read, and a story I will long remember.

3 people found this helpful

Eric Lee

Why bother to read espionage fiction? The real thing is so much better

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 January 2021

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This is the story of Ursula Kuczynski, a Soviet spy who was instrumental in ensuring that Stalin was able to build an atomic bomb. So at first glance, not an entirely sympathetic character. And yet in Ben MacIntyre's hands, one cannot help but admire her.

Ursula was born into a middle-class German Jewish family in Berlin. She joined the Communist Party in the 1920s, participating in street battles with the police. For the first two decades of her work as an agent of Soviet military intelligence (the GRU) she devoted herself to the struggle against fascism. She served the cause in China, Poland, Switzerland and finally in a small village in Oxfordshire, where she was known as "Mrs Burton". During her time in Switzerland, she plotted with other agents to kill Hitler. It was a good plan and might have worked, but was scuppered by the Hitler-Stalin pact. She was never caught, and eventually fled with her children to East Germany where she died in 2000.

Though she remained a Stalinist her entire life, and was bitterly disappointed when the German Democratic Republic came to an end, there is much to be admired in her work, especially in the early years.

Ben MacIntyre is a brilliant writer and tells Ursula's story with compassion and understanding. He does not minimise the horrors of the Stalin regime (Ursula's first husband, also a Soviet spy, spent years in the Gulag).

After reading this book, I wonder why I ever bother to read espionage fiction. The real thing is so much better.

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