So that couple embracing in the stairwell, is that the first ever use of the trope of spies kissing in order to avoid detection?
Not a great thriller So that couple embracing in the stairwell, is that the first ever use of the trope of spies kissing in order to avoid detection?
Not a great thriller by Simenon's standard, and not a deep enough look at the Soviet Union of the 1930s, but offers just enough of both to make it worthwhile. Feels like Simenon is groping around in two then relatively new genres, the spy thriller and the Anti-Soviet polemic. The Soviet stuff, especially in the first half, he takes a different tack than a lot of later writers (I think) in that he tends to focus on the poverty in Batumi, which if nothing else is a much more humane critique than the Reaganite evil empire rhetoric I'm more familiar with.
Like most of Simenon's work this is at it's best when it's really just about the foibles of a guy and how his strategy to cope ultimately fails him. At times it felt like the message wasn't so much a critique of the Soviets so much as finding fault with the protagonist for not seeing how people silently cope and survive in a society where their government isn't providing the basics. I dunno. The stuff with the windows was great, Simenon once again finding another problem unique to 20th century life and exploiting it for the utmost drama.
I wish there had been a little bit more resolution than Adil Bey just quitting the country, but I suppose that does make it realistic. Also cool to see a Turkish protagonist in a novel from this time period without it being weirdly racist. Simenon says he chose Turkey almost at random because it was just another country that would have had diplomatic relations with the USSR, but I don't buy it. Wouldn't Atatürk's Turkey be the sort of Liberal antithesis to the USSR?
Also found it interesting how a lot of Adil Bey's needling of Sonia about Russia's failure are now completely applicable to modern life in the capitalist west: the inability of a populace to do anything to improve their general lot because of the constant surveillance state, the loneliness of constantly being watched, new mothers being coerced back into the workforce after receiving only the most basic maternity leave, living in an apartment complex where your neighbours have too good a view of your unit....more
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