I listened to this non-fiction book (read by the author) and it was brilliant. It is a biography of one of the most successful Soviet spies of the WWII era Ursula Burton nee Kuczynski, or as she was known in Moscow: Agent Sonya. Ursula was born in a family of Jewish intellectuals in pre-war Germany. In her teens, she became interested in communist ideas and remained a staunch Marxist her entire long life. In the 1920s and 30s, even before Germany fell to the rule of fascists, Ursula considered the Soviet Union to be the country that represented her ideals of the social and economic order and was determined to help spread its ideology in the hopes of bringing the communist revolution to other countries. When her husband was sent to Shanghai for work, she became friends with foreign communists in residence there and eventually was recruited by the Soviet intelligence to spy for the USSR.
I was very impressed to find out that she worked for and alongside with Richard Sorge, one of the most notorious and venerated Soviet secret agents. Ursula underwent training at the Soviet intelligence school in Moscow, and carried out successful intelligence work in China, Poland, Switzerland and finally Britain. She recruited, trained and oversaw a wide network of agents, and went undetected by numerous intelligence agencies throughout Europe. Her crowning achievement was helping gather scientific information that allowed the Soviet Union to build the atomic bomb.
This book is truly fascinating and reads more like a thriller or a spy novel than a true biographical account of someone's life. I highly recommend this book. 5 out of 5 stars.
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