City of Gold

Fülszöveg

Mahmoud said: "It is a time of calling in the debts. All over the city, it is a time when debts must be paid." January 1942. Rommel's seemingly invincible Afrika Korps is at the gates of Egypt, perhaps soon to threaten Cairo itself. In the heady confusion of war, rumours and counter-rumours flow thick and fast. But one thing is certain - Rommel has a spy in the city; a source so well-informed that the German commander knows, in advance, every movement of the forces that oppose him. Somewhere, in the teeming streets and bazaars, the British must find him. But Cairo is a city of fool's gold, where nothing can be taken at face value. Beneath every layer of intrigue lies another, as the city heaves with Egyptian discontent at British rule and Jewish gunrunners seize the chance to arm their homeland. Meanwhile, desert raiders, black marketeers and deserters are all enmeshed in a web of lies and treachery in a place where appearances often prove to be as unreliable as the shifting sands.... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Mahmoud said: "It is a time of calling in the debts. All over the city, it is a time when debts must be paid." January 1942. Rommel's seemingly invincible Afrika Korps is at the gates of Egypt, perhaps soon to threaten Cairo itself. In the heady confusion of war, rumours and counter-rumours flow thick and fast. But one thing is certain - Rommel has a spy in the city; a source so well-informed that the German commander knows, in advance, every movement of the forces that oppose him. Somewhere, in the teeming streets and bazaars, the British must find him. But Cairo is a city of fool's gold, where nothing can be taken at face value. Beneath every layer of intrigue lies another, as the city heaves with Egyptian discontent at British rule and Jewish gunrunners seize the chance to arm their homeland. Meanwhile, desert raiders, black marketeers and deserters are all enmeshed in a web of lies and treachery in a place where appearances often prove to be as unreliable as the shifting sands. Amidst the fear, greed and turbulence of the dusty, burnished city, the British Military Police, led by Major Albert Cutler, run a race against time to trap Rommel's agent before the war in North Africa is lost. But even Major Cutler is not what he seems. A desperate man, risking his own survival because of a passion for a girl he hardly knows, he is engaged in his own dangerous game of make-believe. Amid the chaos and disintegration of war, bargains are made between would-be enemies. But as the German advance brings tension in the city to breaking point, the fragile alliances start to crumble and debts must be called in... before confrontation in the desert reveals the hidden truth. Superbly evocative of time and place, CITY OF GOLD is a richly atmospheric portrait of the tensions and desperation of war. Moving expertly across a new arena of conflict, Len Deighton guides his characters, their obsessions and betrayals, with the sureness of touch that is the hallmark of a master storyteller. His wartime Cairo will prove to be as memorable as his Berlin of the sixties. Vissza