ISBN: 9780593136331
Editorial: Crown
Autor: Macintyre, Ben
Año de edición: 2022
N° Paginas: 368
Tipo de pasta: Pasta dura
Descripción: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “entertaining yet objective and often-moving account” (The Wall Street Journal) of one of history’s most notorious prisons—and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried relentlessly to escape their captors, from the author of The Spy and the Traitor“Not since Ian Fleming and John le Carré has a spy writer so captivated readers.”—The Hollywood ReporterIn this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.Prisoners of the Castle traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.ReviewPraise for Prisoners of the Castle“In retelling the story of Colditz, [Macintyre] makes it his own. [An] entertaining yet objectiveand often-moving account.”—The Wall Street Journal“Not since Ian Fleming and John le Carré has a spy writer so captivated readers.”—The Hollywood Reporter“Macintyre details the famous escapes, but, just as importantly, gives a vivid picture of everyday life in what became Germany’s most elite prison. Set aside a few hours for this book, since once you start reading, you will not stop until the last page.”—AirMail“Riveting . . . This is another engrossing tale of WWII intrigue from a master of the genre.”—Publishers Weekly“A mixture of derring-do and a vivid, warts-and-all portrayal of the iconic castle.”—Kirkus ReviewsPraise for Ben Macintyre“John le Carré’s nonfiction counterpart.”—The New York Times“Macintyre has a knack for finding the most fascinating story lines in history.”—David Grann“One of the most gifted espionage writers around.”—Annie Jacobsen“Macintyre is a supremely gifted storyteller. . . . His books are absurdly entertaining.”—The Boston GlobeAbout the AuthorBen Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (U.K.) and the bestselling author of Agent Sonya, The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.1The OriginalsOn the afternoon of November 10, 1940, Captain Pat Reid gazed up at the castle on the cliff and experienced the combination of admiration and anxiety its builders had intended. “We saw looming above us our future prison,” he later wrote. “Beautiful, serene, majestic and yet forbidding enough to make our hearts sink . . . a sight to make the bravest quail.”Quailing was not in Pat Reid’s nature. Indeed, he saw faint-heartedness of any sort as a moral failing, and refused to coun
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