The Fire Agent - by David Baerwald (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"A novel of inspiring humanity and heartbreaking fallibility, The Fire Agent shines a spotlight on the echoes still reverberating to this day. It's a spy novel, a war story, a love story. It is a brilliant piece of historical fiction that is hardly fictional at all."--Graham Yost, executive producer of The Americans and Slow Horses

"Historical fiction on an epic scale. A page-turner about spies in prewar Tokyo but with the weight of moral inquiry at its heart and a fascinating look at a Japan we only thought we knew. A remarkable achievement."--Joseph Kanon, author of Shanghai and The Good German

A sweeping, unforgettable debut novel of espionage, war, love, and tragedy that redefines our understanding of the first half of the twentieth century.

Ernst Baerwald, the scion of an aristocratic German-Jewish family, is a gifted linguist, a talented musician, and a fearless idealist at the dawn of the twentieth century. His work in Milan and then Japan for what will become the German chemical company IG Farben, which is developing a chemical compound that will save humanity from the brink of famine, provides pretext to his undercover work as a spy, while his complicated love life fulfills his romantic sensibilities. Yet as one world war breaks out and then another, irrevocably changing all he once believed in, Ernst discovers that his skills in diplomacy and stealth are now useful in ways he never anticipated.

Based on the life of author David Baerwald's grandfather, The Fire Agent is an astonishing work of fiction that takes us from the idealism of nineteenth-century German science to the dawning of chemical warfare; from Japan's Yakuza to FDR's boutique spy shops; from the rise of fascism in Japan and Germany to America's global dominance at the dawn of the Cold War. A haunting novel about the weight of inheritance and the impossible decisions we face that can lead us to destroy what we love most, it has deep resonance for our own times.

Review Quotes

"The Fire Agent is an utterly engrossing novel of espionage, love, and tragedy. From the emergence of industrial science in Germany to the shadowy spy networks of prewar Tokyo and the corridors of American intelligence, David Baerwald brings the secret machinery at the heart of 20th-century geopolitics roaring to life. I absolutely loved it." --Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds

"A novel of inspiring humanity and heartbreaking fallibility, The Fire Agent shines a spotlight on the echoes still reverberating to this day. It's a spy novel, a war story, a love story. It is a brilliant piece of historical fiction that is hardly fictional at all."--Graham Yost, executive producer of The Americans and Slow Horses

"Historical fiction on an epic scale. A page-turner about spies in prewar Tokyo but with the weight of moral inquiry at its heart and a fascinating look at a Japan we only thought we knew. A remarkable achievement."--Joseph Kanon, author of Shanghai and The Good German

"A sweeping, cinematic swashbuckler of a novel--with an unforgettable love story at its heart--that brings the rise of global fascism during the first half of the twentieth century into sharp focus for us in the twenty-first. I wish I had an ancestor as astonishing and as honorable as Ernst Baerwald."--Janice P. Nimura, author of Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back

About the Author

David Baerwald is a songwriter, musician, performer, and film composer who has collaborated with Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Sheryl Crow, Hans Zimmer, and Baz Luhrmann. Baerwald spent a formative part of his childhood in Tokyo and Los Angeles and currently lives in the Hudson Valley. This is his first novel.