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An Honest Man

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An Honest Man

By: Ben Fergusson
Narrated by: Joe Jameson
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About this listen

The new novel from the award-winning writer Ben Fergusson, author of The Spring of Kasper Meier and The Other Hoffmann Sister.

In West Berlin in 1989, 18-year-old Ralf has just left school and is living a final golden summer with his three best friends. They spend their days swimming, smoking and daydreaming about the future, oblivious to the storm gathering on the other side of the Berlin Wall. But an unsettling discovery about his family and a meeting with the mysterious Oz shatters everything Ralf thought he knew about love and loyalty. And as old Cold War tensions begin to tear his life apart, he finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, forced to make impossible choices about his country, his family and his heart.

©2019 Ben Fergusson (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd Espionage Friendship Genre Fiction Historical Historical Fiction LGBTQIA+ Creators Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense Fiction Heartfelt

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Critic reviews

"The divided Berlin of the Cold War era is brilliantly resurrected on the cusp of momentous change in Ben Fergusson's An Honest Man...the novel movingly recounts Ralf's painful discoveries about love and loyalty." (Sunday Times)

"During the hot summer of 1989, a group of friends mooch about, fall in love, swim and party. All perfectly normal - except this is West Berlin which is still divided by the Wall and awash with spies and paranoia.... The author won awards for his debut, The Spring of Kasper Meier. This is equally atmospheric and thought-provoking." (Daily Mail)

"The stunning, powerful and addictive new novel by the prize-winning author of The Spring of Kasper Meier...." (Attitude Magazine)
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Most relevant
This book is breathtakingly plotted AND subtly and convincingly written, which are qualities that don’t usually go together in contemporary fiction in my view. Really totally surprised to find a contemporary novel this good. The lazy comparison is le carre but I also saw shades of Andre aciman and Anthony Powell.

Astonishing—loved it.

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Thoroughly enjoyed this. The research done for this book was amazing. So good that I thought this was perhaps the authors diary, but no. It has a biographical feel thanks to this research, but it is fiction. Written in such a way that it makes you guess what is to come and if you are like me you will get it wrong throughout. Don't expect thrills and spills, it is a lot more gentle than that but I recommend you give it a go!

Excellent

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I nearly gave up on this book after nothing very much happened in the first 2 or 3 chapters. The awards and juries and judging panels have lied to me again I thought.
Then there was a flicker of interest and I persevered.
By halfway through I was totally hooked.
This became one of those stories where the temptation to move ahead and find out what happened was almost too much to resist. I successfully avoided and the climax on the night of the fall of the Berlin wall was excellent.
The story is clearly a slow burn but catches after a while.
The narration is good and at times the petulance of a group of 18-year-olds coming of age, interspersed with interactions with a wide range of late-80s Berliners is voiced with a great deal of atmosphere. Some of the narrator's voices are disconcerting in how effective their characterisation is.

Totally worth it - no spoilers in review.

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Pretty much has everything you need in a book and so beautiful written. A real joy to read and re-read.

Possibly my favourite ever

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Listening to this book has been a delight in so many ways.... The writing is beautiful without being self consciously literary and is read by Joe Jameson, whose voice and interpretation I loved since hearing his reading of The Charioteer by Mary Renault. The main character, Ralph, follows his journey of self discovery with typical teenage angst, a word so appropriate to the setting of this book, the city of West Berlin, just before the fall of the wall. The city is lovingly described, the smells, sounds and details bringing to life the unfamiliar places and somehow combining with the quirks of the characters to give the book a wonderful sense of place. The spy story within the book is well plotted and the twists and turns are a delight. There are very few things to criticise, some characters are a bit sketchy, the need for the unexpected, as required by the spy novel genre, detracts a bit from the verisimilitude, breaking the spell occasionally, but despite this, I cannot remember the last time I derived so much pleasure from listening to an audiobook. I will rush to buy the author’s other novels and, for the first time in my life, I am drawn to Berlin, feeling compelled to visit. Oh, and this book has the best ending I’ve read, or listened to, for a long time.

A coming of age story, a spy novel and a love letter to Berlin

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