Memory Room

Author(s): Christopher Koch

Fiction

'What is a spy? Are they born, or are they made?'With these words, Vincent Austin analyses his future occupation. Some spies are made, he says, but his kind is born. He is devoted to secrecy for its own sake. Vincent is orphaned early, and his boyhood in Tasmania is spent with an elderly aunt. His fascination with secrecy and espionage - and much else besides - is shared to an uncanny degree by Erika Lange, daughter of a post-World War German immigrant. She too has lost her mother, and she and Vincent see themselves as twin spirits, inhabiting a shared, platonic world of fantasy and ritual. At University, Vincent aims to enter Foreign Affairs - an ambition shared by his easygoing friend Derek Bradley. However, in his final year, Vincent is recruited by ASIS - Australia's overseas secret intelligence service - and his adolescent dream becomes reality. Erika becomes a journalist, eventually entering the overseas service as a press officer. She is an attractive and magnetic woman, but her emotional life is chaotic. She, Vincent and Bradley meet again in 1982, when they are in their thirties, and have all been posted to the Australian Embassy in Beijing. Here, Erika and Bradley begin an affair which is ultimately doomed to fail. At the same time, Vincent attempts an espionage coup which ends in disaster for himself and Bradley.Although THE MEMORY ROOM deals with espionage, its aims go far beyond those of athriller. A psychological study of a brilliant but eccentric secret intelligence operative, it isalso an exploration of the mystical nature of secrecy itself, and of the consequences of ashared obsession.


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9781741667394
  • : Random House Australia
  • : Vintage (Australia)
  • : 0.302
  • : November 2008
  • : 196mm X 130mm X 29mm
  • : Australia
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Christopher Koch
  • : Paperback
  • : 11-Aug
  • : A823.4
  • : 448
  • : FA