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The Stasi was among the most sophisticated intelligence organisations in the world, but by the end of the 80s the state of East Germany was collapsing around it. The squads of armed officers, the torture chambers in the Stasi jails, 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 that BRANDENBURG is set. Dr Rudi Rosenharte - once a double agent, now an art historian living quietly in Dresden - is summoned toTrieste for a rendezvous with former lover and colleague, Annalise Schering. Yet Rosenharte knows she's dead: he'd seen her himself, lying in her own bloodied bathwater. So who is this woman, this ghost? The Stasi believes she's the real Annalise and that she has vital intelligence to impart to Rosenharte, for they have intercepted a letter from her saying exactly that. And to ensure that Rosenharte plays their game, they have imprisoned his family and will only release them when Rudi has got the information they so desperately seek. But the Stasi is not the only intelligence organisation with its claws in Rudi Rosenharte. Soon he is encircled by no fewer than four, including MI6, and he must face a stark choice: to leave those he loves to the mercy of the Stasi; or to return to East Germany to carry out a dangerous assignment under the Stasi's all-seeing eye.
"The writing [is] cogent, angry, stylish and informed. Porter is an expert literary historian, intrigued by his own times. His take on post-war Germany is sober, truthful, anxious and well remembered... Porter's scene-setting is painful and all prevailing. Perhaps it's wimpish to complain, but it could be that he's done the job a touch too well."
Philip Oakes
LITERARY REVIEW, June 2005
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