Summary of The Innocent
“The Innocent” is a gripping spy novel set in 1950s Berlin, at the height of the Cold War. The protagonist, Leonard Marnham, is a young British engineer, involved in a covert operation to tap Soviet telephone lines. While in Berlin, he falls in love with a local woman, Maria Eckdorf, from Kreuzberg, one of the poorest areas of West Berlin.
Reasons to read The Innocent
Ian McEwan’s “The Innocent” is an exploration of love and mistrust within human relationships, set against the backdrop of Cold War-era Berlin of the 1950s. The novel is inspired by Operation Gold, a real-life attempt by the CIA and MI6 to intercept Soviet Army communications via a tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone of the city. Ian McEwan, a renowned British author, won the Booker Prize in 1998 for his novel “Amsterdam”. Other notable works by McEwan include “Saturday”, “On Chesil Beach”, “The Comfort of Strangers”, and “Atonement”.
Original title: The Innocent
Year of publication: 1990
Nr of pages: 231
