AGENT ZIGZAG(ISBN=) 英文原版

“Macintyre is the more graceful writer; Agent Zigzag has
a clarity and shape that make it the more fluid account… I would
give a personal nod to Macintyre’s as the better book… A review
cannot possibly convey the sheer fun of this story… or the
fascinating moral complexities.”
—New York Times Book Review

“[Agent Zigzag’s] incredible wartime adventures, recounted in Ben
Macintyre’s rollicking, spellbinding Agent Zigzag blend the
spy-versus-spy machinations of John le Carré with the high farce of
Evelyn Waugh.”
—The New York Times

“Chapman’s story has been told in fragments in the past,
but only when MI5 declassified his files was it possible to present
it in all its richness and complexity. Macintyre tells it to
perfection, with endless insights into the horror and absurdity of
war….Eddie Chapman was a patriot, in his fashion, and this
excellent book finally does him justice.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“Fact sounds like fast-moving fiction in this espionage saga of a
man who was probably the most improbable double agent to emerge in
World War II. … The author has written an enormously fascinating
book about an enormously fascinating man. The late Eddie Chapman
would have been delighted to at last capture the limelight denied
him by the restrictions of his wartime profession. The question now
is, who will make the movie and who will play the lead? Too bad
Errol Flynn is dead.”
—Washington Times

“[R]ichly de*ive, marvelously illuminating, and just
plain brilliant….One could not think of a better subject for
Macintyre’s curious mind than the man whom British intelligence
dubbed Agent Zigzag in December 1942…. [A] plot – impossible and
pointless to summarize – that is as briskly paced and suspenseful
as any novel’s. Macintyre’s diligent research and access to
once-secret files combine here with his gift of empathetic
imagination and inspired re-creation. He writes with brio and a
festive spirit and has quite simply created a masterpiece.”
—The Boston Globe

“Superb. Meticulously researched, splendidly told, immensely
entertaining and often very moving.”
—John le Carré

“Macintyre [relates] his compellingly cinematic spy thriller with
verve.”
—Entertainment Weekly (an “EW Pick”)

“Agent Zigzag is a true-history thriller, a real
spy story superbly written. It belongs to my favorite genre: the
‘Friday night book’–start it then, because you will want to
stay with it all weekend.”
—Alan Furst

“A portrait of a man who double-crossed not only the Nazis, but
just about every other principle and person he encountered. In
doing so, Eddie Chapman made all thriller writers’ jobs harder,
because this spy tale trumps any fiction.”
—Men’s Journal

“One of the most extraordinary stories of the Second World
War.”
—William Boyd, The Sunday Telegraph

“This is the most amazing book, full of fascinating and
hair-raising true-life adventures…and beautifully told. For anyone
interested in the Second World War, spying, romance, skullduggery
or the hidden chambers of the human mind, it would be impossible to
recommend it too highly.”
—The Mail on Sunday

“Speaking as a former MI6 officer, take it from me: there are very
few books which give you a genuine picture of what it feels like to
be a spy. This is one…. an enthralling war story.”
—The Daily Express

“Macintyre tells Chapman’s tale in a perfect pitch: with the
Boys’ Own thrills of Rider Haggard, the verve of George
MacDonald Fraser and Carl Hiassen’s mordant humor. . . . Hugely
entertaining.”
—The [London] Observer

“If Ben Macintyre had presented this story as a novel, it
would have been denounced as far too unlikely: yet every word of it
is true. Moreover he has that enviable gift, the inability to write
a dull sentence. An enthralling book results from the opening up of
once deadly secret files.”
—The Spectator

“Splendidly vivid. . . . There are endless delightful
twists to the tale.”
—Max Hastings, The [London] Sunday Times

“Ben Macintyre’s rollicking, thriller-paced account…is a Boy’s
Own adventure par excellence and a gripping psychological case
study of a man ‘torn between patriotism and egotism.’”
—Time Out

“Macintyre succeeds in bringing Chapman vividly to life. It is
unlikely that a more engaging study of espionage and deception will
be published this year.”
—The Times

“A preternaturally talented liar and pretty good
safecracker becomes a “spy prodigy” working concurrently for
Britain’s MI5 and the Nazi’s Abwehr.

London Times newsman and popular historian Macintyre (The
Man Who Would be King: The First American in Afghanistan, 2004,
etc) reports on the life and crimes of the late Eddie Chapman using
interviews, newly released secret files and, cautiously, the
English spy’s less-reliable memoirs. Just launching his criminal
career when World War II began, the dashing adventurer was jailed
in the Channel Island Jersey. Volunteering his services to the
occupying Fatherland, he was taken to France and schooled in the
dark arts of espionage and the wicked devices of spies by the likes
of convivial headmaster Herr von Gr?ning and spymaster Oberleutnant
Praetorius. Then the new German agent signed a formal espionage
contract (under which his expected rewards were to be subjected to
income tax). Dropped in England’s green and pleasant land to commit
sabotage, he instead reported directly to His Majesty’s secret
service. There they called their man ‘Agent ZigZag.’ The Germans
had named him “Fritzchen.” Little Fritz, with the help of a
magician, fooled his Nazi handlers into believing he had wrecked an
aircraft factory. After a crafty return to Germany, he made another
parachute drop home to report on an anti-sub device and the
accuracy of the new V-1 flying bomb. The energetic adventurer from
a lower stratum of British society was being run by Oxbridge
gentlemen and by aristocrats of Deutschland at the same time. Or
perhaps he was running them. Adorning his exploits were several
beautiful women and an Iron Cross. It is a remarkable
cloak-and-dagger procedural and a fine tale of unusual wartime
employment….

One of the great true spy stories of World War II, vividly
rendered.”
—Kirkus

From the Hardcover edition.

　　BEN MACINTYRE is writer-at-large and associate editor of the
London Times. He is the author of The Man Who Would Be
King, the Englishman’s Daughter, The Napoleon of
Crime, and Forgotten Fatherland. He lives in London with
his wife, the novelist Kate Muir, and their three children
　　From the Hardcover edition.