The Moment

From the New York Times bestselling author of Leaving the World comes a tragic love story set in Cold War Berlin.

Thomas Nesbitt is a divorced writer in the midst of a rueful middle age. Living a very private life in Maine, in touch only with his daughter and still trying to recover from the end of a long marriage, his solitude is disrupted one wintry morning by the arrival of a box that is postmarked Berlin. The name on the box—Dussmann—unsettles him completely, for it belongs to the woman with whom he had an intense love affair twenty-six years ago in Berlin at a time when the city was cleaved in two and personal and political allegiances were frequently haunted by the deep shadows of the Cold War.

Refusing initially to confront what he might find in that box, Thomas nevertheless is forced to grapple with a past he has never discussed with any living person and in the process relive those months in Berlin when he discovered, for the first and only time in his life, the full, extraordinary force of true love. But Petra Dussmann, the woman to whom he lost his heart, was not just a refugee from a police state, but also someone who lived with an ongoing sorrow that gradually rewrote both their destinies.

A love story of great epic sweep and immense emotional power, The Moment explores why and how we fall in love—and the way we project on to others that which our hearts so desperately seek.

Editorial Reviews

Cold war Berlin provides a moody backdrop for Kennedy's tale of a travel writer's remembrances of love and betrayal, friendship and danger, opportunity and entrapment, while working for Radio Liberty in the divided city. Narrator Thomas Nesbitt, age 50, retreats into his house in Maine to wallow in memories of living in Germany 25 years earlier after the success of his first book. In West Berlin, Thomas meets his soul mate, Petra Dussmann, a translator with an iron curtain around her heart. Petra's mysterious melancholy proves irresistible, and as Thomas is drawn into a passionate affair, he also becomes entangled in spy games played by the Stasi and the CIA. Against the mix of le Carré esque intrigue and Isherwoodish debauchery, the couple's fervor flourishes until they start talking marriage. That's when Thomas learns what nearly everyone has been trying to tell him: relationships are shadowy in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Kennedy (Leaving the World) once again creates characters that are credible if not complex in a compelling if not wildly original love story thickened by stories-within-his-story. This isn't so much a new perspective on the cold war as an observant, compassionate, and romantic portrait of emotional turmoil in troubled times. (May)

About The Author:

Douglas Kennedy is the author of ten novels, including the international bestseller Leaving the World and The Moment. His work has been translated into 22 languages, and in 2007 he received the French decoration of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has two children and now divides his time between London, Paris, Berlin and Maine.