MONAT, Pawel [with] DILLE, John

Spy in The U.S.

New York: Harper and Row, 1961. Stated First Edition. Octavo. Publisher's blue cloth spine over sage green cloth boards titled and decorated in silver to spine and front board. Dustjacket. [ix]; 208pp. Clean and sharp with some very light bumping and scuffing, and a couple of areas of minor discoloration at the spine ends; internally clean; in a dustjacket with some light marginal wear, some superficial soiling and some extraneous tape reinforcement to verso. A very good, sharp copy.

A pacy and compelling memoir of Monat's time as a newly minted Polish infiltrator, despatched to the US to gather whatever military intelligence he could, whilst staying one step ahead of the FBI and the military authorities. A frequent trope in espionage memoirs of this sort is the surprise and gradual existential erosion that comes when agents like Monat realize that life in the West, ridiculous and random as it is, bears little resemblance to the hydra of decadence, corruption and decay it is portrayed as in the Soviet East. Monat's road to Damascus moment began when, on his way to spy on US military exercises, his car got bogged down in a ditch, and a passing African American family stopped and insisted on digging him out and helping him upon his way. They undoubtedly remembered him, because Monat was so grateful he gave them the equivalent of a week's wages for their trouble.
The contrast between the theoretical vision of life in the ragged, drunken, corrupt West, and the practical outcome of actually driving around America and seeing its people, rarely failed to send the agent in question into a flat spin of internal contradiction that ended frequently, as it did with Monat, in defection from the East in favor of a life where people stop and help you on the highway. Mileage may vary.

Price: $75.00

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