Joseph Kanon | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1946 (age 77–78) Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Harvard University, Trinity College |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Known for | Author of spy novels |
| Spouse | Robin Straus |
Joseph Kanon (born 1946) is an American author, best known for thriller and spy novels set in the period immediately after World War II. [1]
In 1946, Kanon was born in Pennsylvania, U.S.
Kanon studied at Harvard University, and at Trinity College in Cambridge. As an undergraduate, he published his first stories in The Atlantic Monthly .
Kanon was the editor in chief, CEO, and president of the publishing houses Houghton Mifflin and E. P. Dutton in New York.
Kanon began his writing career in 1995. His first novel, Los Alamos (1997), became a bestseller and received the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1998. Further novels followed, including The Prodigal Spy, The Good German and Alibi. His stories are set in the period between World War II and 1950, and he has often used a real event, such as the Potsdam Conference or the Manhattan Project, as the background for a murder case. [1] His novels are critically acclaimed, and reviewers from the Boston Globe and The New York Times have compared his work with the novels of Graham Greene and John le Carré. [2] A film based on The Good German was produced in 2006, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. Istanbul Passage is a spy thriller set in that city in 1945. Leaving Berlin (2015) concerns an American expatriate who becomes an unwilling double agent of the American and East German intelligence services during the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949. [3]
Kanon is married to Robin Straus, a literary agent. They reside in New York City, New York.
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom, then migrated to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader.
Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligence agencies. It was given new impetus by the development of fascism and communism in the lead-up to World War II, continued to develop during the Cold War, and received a fresh impetus from the emergence of rogue states, international criminal organizations, global terrorist networks, maritime piracy and technological sabotage and espionage as potent threats to Western societies. As a genre, spy fiction is thematically related to the novel of adventure, the thriller and the politico-military thriller.
The spy film, also known as the spy thriller, is a genre of film that deals with the subject of fictional espionage, either in a realistic way or as a basis for fantasy. Many novels in the spy fiction genre have been adapted as films, including works by John Buchan, le Carré, Ian Fleming (Bond) and Len Deighton. It is a significant aspect of British cinema, with leading British directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed making notable contributions and many films set in the British Secret Service.
Leonard Cyril Deighton is a British author. His publications have included cookery books and works on history, but he is best known for his spy novels.
Theodore Alvin Hall was an American physicist and an atomic spy for the Soviet Union, who, during his work on United States efforts to develop the first and second atomic bombs during World War II, gave a detailed description of the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, and of several processes for purifying plutonium, to Soviet intelligence.
Genre fiction, also known as formula fiction or popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
Mother Night is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut, first published in February 1962.
ODESSA is an American codename coined in 1946 to cover Nazi underground escape-plans made at the end of World War II by a group of SS officers with the aim of facilitating secret escape routes, and any directly ensuing arrangements. The concept of the existence of an actual ODESSA organisation has circulated widely in fictional spy novels and movies, including Frederick Forsyth's best-selling 1972 thriller The Odessa File. The escape-routes have become known as "ratlines". Known goals of elements within the SS included allowing SS members to escape to Argentina or to the Middle East under false passports.
5 Fingers, known also as Five Fingers, is a 1952 American spy film noir directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and produced by Otto Lang. The screenplay written by Michael Wilson was based on the 1950 book Operation Cicero by Ludwig Carl Moyzisch, Nazi commercial attaché at the German embassy in Ankara, Turkey (1943–44).
Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Exactly what was given, and whether everyone on the list gave it, are still matters of some scholarly dispute. In some cases, some of the arrested suspects or government witnesses had given strong testimonies or confessions which they recanted later or said were fabricated. Their work constitutes the most publicly well-known and well-documented case of nuclear espionage in the history of nuclear weapons. At the same time, numerous nuclear scientists wanted to share the information with the world scientific community, but this proposal was firmly quashed by the United States government.
The Good German is a 2006 American neo-noir crime film. A film adaptation of Joseph Kanon's 2001 novel of the same name, it was directed by Steven Soderbergh, and stars George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire. Set in Berlin following the Allied victory over the Nazis, it begins as a murder mystery but weaves in elements involving the American postwar employment of Nazi rocket scientists in Operation Paperclip.
Background to Danger is a 1943 World War II spy thriller film starring George Raft and featuring Brenda Marshall, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre.
Olen Steinhauer is an American writer of spy fiction novels, including The Tourist, part of the Milo Weaver series, and the Yalta Boulevard Sequence. Steinhauer also created the TV series Berlin Station, focused on a fictional Central Intelligence Agency branch operating in Berlin, which began airing in 2016.
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is a 1965 British spy film based on the 1963 novel of the same name by John le Carré. The film stars Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, and Oskar Werner. It was directed by Martin Ritt, and the screenplay was written by Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper.
Stella Ingrid Goldschlag, also known by her married names Stella Kübler, Stella Kübler-Isaaksohn and Ingrid Gärtner, was a German Jewish woman who collaborated with the Gestapo during World War II, operating around Berlin exposing and denouncing Berlin's underground Jews, after being tortured in Gestapo custody and falsely being promised the safety of her family. After the war, Goldschlag "converted to Christianity and became an open anti-Semite".
Martin Kosleck was a German film actor. Like many other German actors, he fled when the Nazis came to power. Inspired by his deep hatred of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Kosleck made a career in Hollywood playing villainous Nazis in films.
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable, and is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible.
The Two Faces of January is a 2014 thriller film written and directed by Hossein Amini, in his feature film directorial debut. It is based on Patricia Highsmith's 1964 novel The Two Faces of January and stars Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac.
Bridge of Spies is a 2015 American historical drama film directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg, written by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, and starring Tom Hanks in the lead role, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, and Alan Alda. Set during the Cold War, the film tells the story of lawyer James B. Donovan, who is entrusted with negotiating the release of Francis Gary Powers—a convicted Central Intelligence Agency pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960—in exchange for Rudolf Abel, a convicted Soviet KGB spy held by the United States, whom Donovan represented at trial. The name of the film refers to the Glienicke Bridge, which connects Potsdam with Berlin, where the prisoner exchange took place. The film was an international co-production of the United States and Germany.
Oscar Seborer, codenamed Godsend, was an atomic spy for the Soviet Union who worked at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and the Los Alamos Laboratory, New Mexico.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
