The Company: A Novel of the CIA

By Robert Littell

An engrossing, multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic yet utterly entertaining and candid saga, bringing to life through a host of characters – historical and imagined – nearly fifty years of this secretive and powerful organization.

Intelligent and ironic, Littell tells it like it was: CIA agents fighting not only the ‘good fight’ against foreign enemies, but sometimes the bad fight too. The ends justify such means as CIA-organized assassinations, covert wars, kidnappings, and the toppling of legitimate governments. Behind every manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, however, one question remains, which spans the length of the book . . . Who is the mole within the CIA?

An astonishing novel that captures the life-and-death struggle of an entire generation of CIA operatives during a long Cold War.

‘The best American spy writer currently at work’

Daily Telegraph

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Nov 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447216315

Robert Littell

Connoisseurs of the literary spy thriller have elevated Robert Littell to the genre's highest ranks - along with John le Carre, Len Deighton and Graham Greene. Littell's novels include The Defection of A.J. Lewinter, The October Circle, Mother Russia, The Amateur (which was made into a feature film), The Company, An Agent in Place and Walking Back the Cat. A former Newsweek journalist, Robert Littell is American, currently living in France.

Reviews for The Company

[kerns222 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

History as thriller/page-turner. Simplified, romanticized account of the CIA costarring many real characters from the past (some names were changed to protect someone??, but it's easy to figure out who's who with wikipedia.) Among others, Andropov drops in, Castro comes by, and Nixon is off in the wings.

Also a little mild lovey-dovey. Lots of plots, liquor, and subplots. Multiple generations of Yale-trained US spies and their counterparts from Moscow hunt each other and snoop and beget more spies.

Starts when Stalin and Truman were nose-to-nose, and plays the Great Game thru Afganistan(sound familiar, you history buffs). Hungary, Berlin, Bay or Pigs, all make an appearance, too. A hot read for a long voyage (nearly 1000 pages). The question here is what is real and what is fiction. It scares me to think so much was probably real.

[storyjunkie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is my first encounter with real people being used in fiction. Fictionalization of real people is distasteful to me - no matter how well done. This book has a lot to do with that reaction.

[literaryrunner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This long novel deals with the CIA from directly after World War II in Berlin and the start of the Cold War through the first Iraq War. I was surprised how engrossed I became in the maneuverings of the agents, the political games, the spycraft, the betrayals, double agents, triple agents, murders and subterfuge involved within our own CIA, let alone the Soviet Union's KGB. Extremely well developed characters, time changes and dramatic plots make this a page turner

[shliz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

if you like spy books, this is a must read!

[jcbrunner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Bildungsroman follows the careers of three American and one Russian spying for the CIA and KGB from the 1950s to the 1990s. The main stations are Berlin 1950, Budapest 1956, Cuba 1961, Washington 1974, Afghanistan 1983 and Moscow 1991. Apart from the Bay of Pigs invasion, the novel stresses the CIA successes and mentions only en passant the disastrous actions in South America and Asia. The ivy-league and family clan-oriented recruiting (is it true that whole families work for the CIA?) defeat their main adversary by default, as the Soviet empire collapses.

[neilsantos_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow. This was probably the best book I read this year. It was fantastic. I have recently rediscovered an old love for spy thrillers and this is an epic spy thriller. It isn't thrilling like an action movie, it uses a very slow burn to get through the operations. Warning: the book itself is huge, and heavy to carry around. The Wall, Hungary '56, Bay of Pigs, Afghanistan, the coup against Gorby. It had all the old friends of the era, Kim Philby, Allen Dulles, Bill Casey. I am totally going to read more of this guy's stuff.