Synopses & Reviews
ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE IS A TOUR DE FORCE, an important work of history as it was lived, a narrative of multiple betrayals on both sides of the Cold War that ends with triumph and a new beginning in America.
In this true-life thriller Kati Marton, an award-winning journalist, exposes the cruel mechanics of the Communist Terror State using the secret police files on her parents, as well as dozens of interviews that reveal how her family was spied on and betrayed by friends, colleagues, and even their children’s babysitter. In this moving and brave memoir, Marton searches for and finds her parents and love.
Review
"A true story that is deeply moving and altogether amazing. It is a mystery story, a love story, and a walk through history." -- BARBARA WALTERS
Review
"Kati Marton's powerful and unsparing memoir is one of the great new testimonies from the Cold War era, candidly relating a version of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon as lived by one of the daughters of the resisters. I will never forget this book and neither will you." -- SEAN WILENTZ, AUTHOR OF THE RISE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
Review
"This is an honest, bracing, unforgettable story that will change the way readers think about the middle of the 20th century in Europe. For all of what we know of places like Hungary in the Stalinist period, we know nothing until we feel it, and here we do, finally and profoundly." -- STEVE COLL, AUTHOR OF GHOST WARS AND THE BIN LADENS
Review
"It is the rare page-turner and thriller that comes in the form of a family memoir. By sharing her family's improbable journey, Kati Marton has left her readers moved and changed, with a renewed appreciation for the freedoms -- and the family -- we cherish." -- SAMANTHA POWER, AUTHOR OF A PROBLEM FROM HELL AND CHASING THE FLAME
Review
"Kati Marton has written a candid and courageous book about a chapter in her parents' lives that most daughters would have preferred to leave unexamined." -- LOUIS BEGLEY, AUTHOR OF MATTERS OF HONOR AND WARTIME LIES
Review
“Powerful and absolutely absorbing. . . .Enemies of the People has all the magnetism, and, yes, the excitement, of the very best spy fiction. But would that it were fiction. . . . An honestly inspiring story.”
--Alan Furst, The New York Times Book Review
Review
“Marton’s story is one of bravery, suffering, survival and vindication. She tells it in straightforward, lucid prose . . . carefully reported, almost clinical account of what it is like to live in a totalitarian state and how hard it is to escape from it. . . . It’s a terrific story, and Marton tells it very well.”
--Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
Review
“Wonderful. . . . A family story that reads like a novel. . . . A book that is honest, frank, and true . . . recalls the best works of Koestler and Orwell, but contained within a family story, which remains for all its horrors, touching, life-loving, even, in its own unsentimental way, inspirational.”
--Michael Korda, The Daily Beast
Synopsis
Renowned author Kati Marton tells how her journalist parents survived the Nazis in Budapest and were imprisoned by the Soviets.
Synopsis
Acclaimed journalist Kati Marton recounts her family's harrowing history of being targeted by Communist operatives and her own father's imprisonment as Cold War tensions ran high across Eastern Europe. Enemies of the People is a tour de force, an important work of history as it was lived, a narrative of multiple betrayals on both sides of the Cold War that ends with triumph and a new beginning in America.
In this true-life thriller Kati Marton, an award-winning journalist, exposes the cruel mechanics of the Communist Terror State using the secret police files on her parents, as well as dozens of interviews that reveal how her family was spied on and betrayed by friends, colleagues, and even their children's babysitter. In this moving and brave memoir, Marton searches for and finds her parents and love.
About the Author
Kati Marton is the author of Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her other books include The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World, Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, Wallenberg, The Polk Conspiracy, and A Death in Jerusalem. She is an award-winning former NPR and ABC News correspondent. She lives in New York City.