Publisher : Amazon Crossing (August 1, 2021)
Publication date : August 1, 2021
Language : English
Two Spies in Caracas: A Novel
From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Power comes an edge-of-your-seat political thriller about rival spies, dangerous love, and one of history’s most devastating revolutions.
Venezuela, 1992. Unknown colonel Hugo Chávez stages an ill-fated coup against a corrupt government, igniting the passions of Venezuela’s poor and catapulting the oil-rich country to international attention. For two rival spies hurriedly dispatched to Caracas—one from Washington, DC, and the other from Fidel Castro’s Cuba—this is a career-defining mission.
Smooth-talking Iván Rincón of Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate needs a rebel ally to secure the future of his own country. His job: support Chávez and the revolution by rallying the militants and neutralizing any opposing agents.
Meanwhile, the CIA’s Cristina Garza will do everything in her power to cut Chávez’s influence short. Her priority: stabilize the greatest oil reserves on the planet by ferreting out and eliminating Cuba’s principal operative.
As Chávez surges to power, Iván and Cristina are caught in the fallout of a toxic political time bomb: an intrepid female reporter and unwitting informant, a drug lord and key architect in Chávez’s rise, and personal entanglements between the spies themselves. With everything at stake, the adversaries find themselves at the center of a game of espionage, seduction, murder, and shifting alliances playing out against the precarious backdrop of a nation in free fall. A thrilling fictional story based on unimaginable real-life events.
MY REVIEW
I enjoy reading about history and some political history so this book definitely was intriguing and enjoyable for me. It involves an exciting plot line that involves one of history's most dangerous revolutions in Venezuela, and about two rival spies from Washington and the other from Cuba.
The writing was immersive and intense - quite the read I enjoyed.
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT:
Moisés Naím is an internationally-syndicated columnist and best-selling author of influential books. In 2011, he launched Efecto Naím, an innovative weekly television program highlighting surprising world trends with visually-striking videos, graphics and interviews with world leaders which is widely watched in Latin America today. Dr. Naím gained international recognition with the successful re-launch of the prominent journal Foreign Policy and, over his fourteen years (1996-2010) as editor, turned the magazine into a modern, award-winning publication on global politics and economics.
Author of books:
* Paper Tigers and Minotaurs: The Politics of Venezuela's Economic Reforms (1993, economics)
* Altered States: Globalization, Sovereignty and Governance (2000, economics)
* Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy (2005, economics)
* The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What It Used to Be (2013, social studies)
Moisés Naím is an internationally-syndicated columnist and best-selling author of influential books. In 2011, he launched Efecto Naím, an innovative weekly television program highlighting surprising world trends with visually-striking videos, graphics and interviews with world leaders which is widely watched in Latin America today. Dr. Naím gained international recognition with the successful re-launch of the prominent journal Foreign Policy and, over his fourteen years (1996-2010) as editor, turned the magazine into a modern, award-winning publication on global politics and economics.
Author of books:
* Paper Tigers and Minotaurs: The Politics of Venezuela's Economic Reforms (1993, economics)
* Altered States: Globalization, Sovereignty and Governance (2000, economics)
* Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy (2005, economics)
* The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What It Used to Be (2013, social studies)
A conversation between bestselling author, Moises Naim and
award-winning translator, Daniel Hahn on their recent collaboration,
TWO SPIES IN CARACAS,
available for the first time in English from
Amazon Crossing on August 1, 2021
Danny Hahn: You've written about Venezuela a lot, but never in fiction. What did
you think a novel would allow you to do, that you hadn't been able to do before?
Moises Naim: I decided to write this novel out of frustration and because I felt I
needed to freely tell this story as I “knew” it unfolded, even though I could not prove
it. Frustration and the quest for liberation were the forces propelling Two Spies in
Caracas.
I had long felt that I was not telling my readers the full story of what was going on
inside Hugo Chávez' government. Extraordinary events were taking place in secret.
While sometimes I did get glimpses of what was happening, I consistently failed to
corroborate the parts of the story that were as critically important as they were
clandestine. Thus, the frustration.
As you correctly point out, Danny, I had been writing newspaper columns, academic
articles, nonfiction books about Venezuela and about President Chávez for more than
two decades. I covered his Bolivarian revolution, his 21st century socialism and his
extravagant, extraordinary and, ultimately, devastating deeds both inside and outside
the country.
Yet, every time I read the finished product - the article, the essay, the book - I had
doubts. I knew I had left out events and circumstances that were critically important
but that I could not describe, report, or reveal as a journalist because I could not
corroborate them. Again, I had no way of confirming my intuitions or “facts.”
The liberation came when I decided that I would tell the story as I “knew” it, even if I
could not prove it. Writing this fictional account, I felt a sense of freedom that I had
not experienced before as a writer. It was a completely new writing process and one
that I greatly enjoyed.
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