Brothers - Hardcover

Michael Bar-Zohar

4.13

31 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 044990511X ISBN 13: 9780449905111

Publisher: Fawcett, 1993

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"All the action one could desire...A tightly organized look back at the cold war and the chilling amorality of two of its leading players--the KGB and the CIA...A deft piece of work."
--The New York Times Book Review
"SPELLBINDING...Fast-paced and intricate, BROTHERS is full of suspense."
--The Indianapolis Star
Family tragedy exiles one brother to America and holds one in Russia. Alexander is raised Jewish and becomes a distinguished scholar of Russian studies. Dimitri grows up in a Soviet orphanage, where, trained to be the perfect communist, he strives to become a high-level KGB operative. It is only a matter of time before he draws the brother he never knew, the brother he hates more than anyone on earth, into the dangerous game of espionage.
Through the height of the cold war, Dimitri and Alex fight on opposite sides. Their hatred for each other explodes into acts of terrorism, assassination, and betrayal. From Afghanistan to Rome, in Moscow, Paris, Washington, and New York, with boundless will and ruthless determination, the two brothers battle to destroy each other, until a shocking revelation changes their lives forever....
"AN EXCELLENT NOVEL OF EPIC PROPORTION."
--Houston Chronicle
"A TANTALIZING SETUP...A STUNNING FINALE."
--Publishers Weekly
From the Paperback edition.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Amazing but true: the major upheavals in Soviet-American policy from the Cuban missile crisis to the abortive coup against Gorbachev were all sparked by a monstrous sibling rivalry between two half- brothers, raised half a world apart. The boys are both sons of Soviet-Jewish poet Tanya Gordon, doomed by her membership in an anti-fascist group and by Stalin's relentless anti-Semitism. To save the life of her son Alex, she abandons her condemned husband, poet Victor Wolf, and marries KGB Col. Boris Morozov, who has time to father another son, Dimitri, before Tanya and then Morozov himself are liquidated. Responding to Tanya's dying wish, Morozov sends Alex to Brooklyn to grow up with Tanya's sister Nina Kramer. After endless crosscutting between scenes from the boys' adolescence--Alex is tormented by kids who call his aunt a Red; Dimitri kills a bully who threatens to unmask him as a traitor's son; Alex enrolls in the Sovietology program at Brown; Dimitri trains for the KGB--the two are ready for their momentous collision: CIA agent Franco Grimaldi, eager to recruit Alex, allows Dimitri to find out where he is and lure him to Paris for a meeting; when Dimitri's recalled to Russia, Alex promptly takes his place with his lover Tatiana Romanov; Dimitri finds out and vows revenge; Grimaldi leaks the runaway lovers' location to Dimitri and stands back while Dimitri strangles Tatiana. There's lots more intrigue to come--in fact, ``Afghanistan, Poland, and Star Wars were for [Dimitri] nothing but pawns in...the deadly game he played against his brother''--as Alex and Dimitri keep looking for new ways to kill, maim, or annoy each other, leaving their messy footprints all over foreign policy until the final, ill-advised twist. Former Knesset member Ben-Zohar (The Deadly Document, 1980, etc.), who ought to know better, has written an entertaining, deliriously overscaled, deeply irresponsible spy-soaper. Ah, well, boys will be boys. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Despite a tantalizing setup, this Cold War thriller quickly descends to the level of soap opera. Bar-Zohar, whose previous espionage fiction ( The Devil's Spy ) has appeared under the pseudonym Michael Hastings, opens on a scene from the Stalinist purges--the trial and execution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Writers Committee. Tonya Gordon, a poet whose husband has been sentenced to death, escapes the same fate by marrying NKVD officer Boris Morozov in order to save her son, Alex. Boris and Tonya have another son, but eventually the purges catch up to Tonya. Boris avoids his own fall long enough to smuggle Alex to Tonya's sister in Brooklyn and to stash his own son, Dimitri, in a harsh military orphanage. Later, Alex embarks on an academic career in Russian studies while Dimitri ends up as a top international killer for the KGB. A CIA agent, planning to get at Dimitri through Alex, engineers a reunion in Paris. The brothers fall for the same woman (a Romanov, no less) and straight into espionage stereotypes. Exposed to Dimitri's evil nature, Alex joins the CIA to wage lifelong war against his KGB brother; each rises to head his organization. The early Soviet history and the stunning finale aren't enough to salvage the cliched characterizations and plot.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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