American Spy
by Lauren Wilkinson
On This Page
Description
“American Spy updates the espionage thriller with blazing originality.”—Entertainment Weekly“There has never been anything like it.”—Marlon James, GQ
“So much fun . . . Like the best of John le Carré, it’s extremely tough to put down.”—NPR
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • Entertainment Weekly • Esquire • BuzzFeed • Vulture • Real show more Simple • Good Housekeeping • The New York Public Library
What if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love?
It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Sankara is doing for his country. Yes, even though she is still grieving the mysterious death of her sister, whose example led Marie to this career path in the first place. Yes, even though a furious part of her suspects she’s being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent.
In the year that follows, Marie will observe Sankara, seduce him, and ultimately have a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American.
Inspired by true events—Thomas Sankara is known as “Africa’s Che Guevara”—American Spy knits together a gripping spy thriller, a heartbreaking family drama, and a passionate romance. This is a face of the Cold War you’ve never seen before, and it introduces a powerful new literary voice.
NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD • Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
“Spy fiction plus allegory, and a splash of pan-Africanism. What could go wrong? As it happens, very little. Clever, bracing, darkly funny, and really, really good.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Inspired by real events, this espionage thriller ticks all the right boxes, delivering a sexually charged interrogation of both politics and race.”—Esquire
“Echoing the stoic cynicism of Hurston and Ellison, and the verve of Conan Doyle, American Spy lays our complicities—political, racial, and sexual—bare. Packed with unforgettable characters, it’s a stunning book, timely as it is timeless.”—Paul Beatty, Man Booker Prizewinning author of The Sellout. show less
Tags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Digital audiobook performed by Bahni Turpin
4****
From the book jacket: It’s 1986, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out. So when she’ given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso, she says yes. Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Sankara is doing for his country. Yes, even though she is still grieving the mysterious death of her sister. Yes, even though a part of her suspects she’s being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent
My reactions:
What an interesting and show more inventive debut. Told as a letter to her young children, Marie relates the events that led to her meeting their father and her career in counterintelligence. Wilkinson uses some events from history – particularly the assassination of Thomas Sankara – to frame this story of personal responsibility, family dynamics, and loyalty: to family, to country, to social ideals.
I loved Marie as a central character. She’s principled, self-reliant, smart, resilient, strong in mind and body, and fiercely protective of her family. Do NOT mess with this woman!
Bahni Turpin performed the audio book and she does a marvelous job. She is quickly becoming one of my favorite audio narrators. show less
4****
From the book jacket: It’s 1986, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out. So when she’ given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso, she says yes. Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Sankara is doing for his country. Yes, even though she is still grieving the mysterious death of her sister. Yes, even though a part of her suspects she’s being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent
My reactions:
What an interesting and show more inventive debut. Told as a letter to her young children, Marie relates the events that led to her meeting their father and her career in counterintelligence. Wilkinson uses some events from history – particularly the assassination of Thomas Sankara – to frame this story of personal responsibility, family dynamics, and loyalty: to family, to country, to social ideals.
I loved Marie as a central character. She’s principled, self-reliant, smart, resilient, strong in mind and body, and fiercely protective of her family. Do NOT mess with this woman!
Bahni Turpin performed the audio book and she does a marvelous job. She is quickly becoming one of my favorite audio narrators. show less
This is a novel in the form of a confessional letter written by a woman named Marie to her sons because she fears she is about to die and she wants them to know her story. She worked as an FBI agent in the 1980s, and found herself involved in some unethical situations. Her confession tells of her childhood in Harlem and her adoration of her sister and father and her desire to work for the FBI to fulfill her father's dreams of creating an equitable world and her sister's dreams of being a badass spy. Once she is in the FBI, she finds it hard to accomplish anything meaningful, especially because as a black woman she is undervalued and relegated to tedious tasks. She is given an opportunity to do something bigger: to get close to the show more communist leader of Burkina Faso, where the American government is trying to install their own puppet government.
There are lots of spy stories out there, but this one is unusual in so many ways. I don't know of any other spy novels where the spy is a black woman. Marie is incredibly intelligent and analytical. She believes in the greater good, but she questions the FBI and their methods. She is willing to take the law into her own hands if need be.
The book also grapples with the difficult questions of complicity. Marie carefully examines her own role in what is happening in the world around her and has to make some difficult decisions about what she is willing to participate in.
This book is more cerebral than most spy thrillers - there's more introspection than action, which makes the book feel a little slow, but also a lot more realistic. show less
There are lots of spy stories out there, but this one is unusual in so many ways. I don't know of any other spy novels where the spy is a black woman. Marie is incredibly intelligent and analytical. She believes in the greater good, but she questions the FBI and their methods. She is willing to take the law into her own hands if need be.
The book also grapples with the difficult questions of complicity. Marie carefully examines her own role in what is happening in the world around her and has to make some difficult decisions about what she is willing to participate in.
This book is more cerebral than most spy thrillers - there's more introspection than action, which makes the book feel a little slow, but also a lot more realistic. show less
Not your average spy thriller, but a meditation on race, race relations, and American imperialism in Africa.
That is not to say that there's no action. True, the spy in the story is no James Bond, but the protagonist is much more true to life as real spies work. Marie battles racism and sexism, while agents try to find ways to use and exploit her. She in turn tries to use the government agents to obtain information about a family tragedy.
As she moves from FBI agent to contract worker for the CIA, she becomes ensnared in a plot against an African revolutionary leader, one who espouses Communism and denounces neocolonialism. When she realizes that she's misjudged the real aim of her project, she becomes determined to thwart the venal show more forces behind it, even in the face of danger.
Highly recommended for readers who want to see American spying through a new lens. show less
That is not to say that there's no action. True, the spy in the story is no James Bond, but the protagonist is much more true to life as real spies work. Marie battles racism and sexism, while agents try to find ways to use and exploit her. She in turn tries to use the government agents to obtain information about a family tragedy.
As she moves from FBI agent to contract worker for the CIA, she becomes ensnared in a plot against an African revolutionary leader, one who espouses Communism and denounces neocolonialism. When she realizes that she's misjudged the real aim of her project, she becomes determined to thwart the venal show more forces behind it, even in the face of danger.
Highly recommended for readers who want to see American spying through a new lens. show less
I picked this up thinking it was a spy thriller set in Burkina Faso, where the spy was a black woman. This intrigued me, as I have been looking for an spy thriller written by someone other than a white British or American man. I love espionage novels, but I desperately wanted a different perspective.
American Spy does have spy thriller elements, but it's so much more. It's told as a journal/letter written by the main character to her sons after someone breaks into their home and she kills the intruder, explaining her history and theirs. It has an almost memoir feel to it, as Marie takes her sons and the reader through her childhood, her relationship with her sister, her time at the FBI, and her experience as a foreign operative in show more Africa.
It's nicely paced, and very unique. I've definitely never read a story quite like this one and it leaves you wanting more, wanting the rest of Marie's story. The ending isn't disappointing at all, but it is open, and I don't dare say more as I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Bahni Turpin, and she was phenomenal. show less
American Spy does have spy thriller elements, but it's so much more. It's told as a journal/letter written by the main character to her sons after someone breaks into their home and she kills the intruder, explaining her history and theirs. It has an almost memoir feel to it, as Marie takes her sons and the reader through her childhood, her relationship with her sister, her time at the FBI, and her experience as a foreign operative in show more Africa.
It's nicely paced, and very unique. I've definitely never read a story quite like this one and it leaves you wanting more, wanting the rest of Marie's story. The ending isn't disappointing at all, but it is open, and I don't dare say more as I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Bahni Turpin, and she was phenomenal. show less
'American Spy' turned out to be a fascinating, well-written thought-provoking book, that I almost didn't buy. 'American Spy is Lauren Wilkinson's first novel so I only had the publisher's summary to go on and that almost made me pass. It opens with:
'What if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love? One woman struggles to choose between her honor and her heart in this enthralling espionage drama that deftly hops between New York and West Africa.'
Can you hear my eyes rolling? A Cold War Spy Romance. What a pitch.
Then I saw that 'American Spy' had been on Barak Obama's 2019 summer reading list so I assumed that it was more than pulp fiction.
From the rest of the publisher's summary, I thought I'd be reading an American show more spy thriller, with fictional characters woven into the real efforts by the CIA to undermine Thomas Sankara, a charismatic Marxist-Leninist Pan-Africanist who become the first President of Burkina Faso in 1983, with the twist being that I the main character was a black woman.
That is the frame that this book hangs on, but it's not really what the book is about.
Anyone looking for a black female version of Jack Ryan is going to be disappointed. This book is closer to Le Carré than Clancy but with a voice all its own.
Like Le Carré most recent novels 'Agent Running In The Field' or 'A Delicate Truth' or 'A Legacy Of Spies', Wilkinson's novel focuses on what kind of person becomes a spy and what it says about them. Where Le Carré focuses on establishment insiders who appear to be fully paid up members of the Old Boys Club but who actually sit a little outside of polite society, Wilkinson focuses on what it means to be a black woman, who is neither welcomed nor valued by the white male establishment and yet chooses to make a career in the FBI in the 1980s.
The style of storytelling shapes the feel of this novel. It's written as a first-person account by Marie Mitchell to her two twin sons. The account opens with a description of an armed man breaking into their home and trying to kill them. The rest is an explanation, for the sons to read when they are old enough, of the background to the attack and the need for the flight from home that follows it.
This 'letters to my sons' format means that the book is as focused on their family history as it is upon the ins and outs of Cold War spying. It also means that it tends to be more reflective in style. There are moments of tension and there is a fair amount of action but most of the novel is a mother's attempt to pass on to her sons who she is and who they should strive to become. Not surprisingly, this means a lot of the novel is about what it means to be black in America in the eighties.
I found the storytelling style very engaging. Marie Mitchell is an unusual woman who understands that some of her choices are driven by her history with her parents and her sister and some are simply about the kind of person that she is. She doesn't sugar-coat that or apologise for it but she does explain it clearly.
As I came to know Marie Mitchell, my understanding of what the 'American Spy' title meant changed. At one point, she tells the story of her FBI Graduation Ceremony. She has been asked to speak at it but, in a training session shortly before the ceremony, her face has been badly bruised by her large, white, male opponent. Mitchel's father, a senior police officer, sees her on the day of the ceremony, takes in her bruises and tells her that she doesn't have to speak. He says:
'You don't owe them anything. You give them what you wanna give them. But it's easier if they think you're one of them. It's easier to work from the inside. That's what I try to do. I've been a spy in this country for as long as I can remember.'
There's a lot in this book about what the excluded owe to those who exclude them and about how to make a place for yourself in a world that doesn't want you to be in it.
Marie Mitchel sees the world a little too clearly to be entirely comfortable in it. Here's an example of how her teenage self saw her boyfriend.
'I loved Robbie, which meant he could truly make me furious. In too much of what he said, I heard over-confidence about his limited life experience and his aggressively average intelligence. He was the type of guy that, had he been born white, especially if he’d grown up with a little money, would probably have wound up at an excellent business school.'
It was also interesting to see Marie Mitchel take stock of her own privilege and her very American identity when she finds herself in an African state where everyone sees her as American first and black second.
But this isn't just about being black in 80s American. It's about being Marie Mitchel, a woman who grew up with a mother who left one day to return to Martinique. with an older sister who. from a very young age, was determined to become a spy, and with a father who worked within the system, providing them with a good quality of life but finding himself boxed in to a senior but powerless job.
Marie Mitchell is someone who has learned to keep her inner self secret, hiding it behind constructed identities that she thinks will help her get what she wants. She does this because, at a very deep level, she accepts that she cannot have what she wants if she presents herself as she truly is. I think that instead of the clichéd 'What if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love?' pitch in the publisher's summary, the real tension in this book is 'What if you getting what you want required you to break cover and show who you are?'
I think the mindset at this novel's core is shown by what Marie Mitchel writes to her boys about Robbie towards the end of the book:
'A part of me still loves Robbie but I can't tell him that. He'd take it as an invitation. I can only confess that to you two, here in these pages. To tell anyone else how I feel about him is to blow my cover. Throughout my life, the most consistent way I've revealed who I really am is through whom I've chosen to love.'
The words 'revealed' and 'chosen' and the thinking they imply drive the events of the novel.
I won't go into the spy story, other than to say that it's credible and has enough twists to keep it interesting. This novel stands or falls by whether or not you're engaged by Marie Mitchel and her worldview.
I found myself fascinated by what she had to say. I think I was greatly helped in this by having the words delivered by Bahni Turpin, whose narration is flawless. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.
https://soundcloud.com/hachetteaudiouk/american-spy-by-lauren-wilkinson-read-by-... show less
Marie is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She's brilliant, knowledgeable and dedicated. But it's 1986 and Marie is a young black woman, so the FBI doesn't know what to do with her, leaving her to fill out paperwork and cultivate assets she'll never be allowed to use. She's seen a family friend sidelined and she's intent on avoiding his fate. So when the CIA comes knocking with an assignment that sounds too good to be true, she's cautious, but very interested. And so Marie becomes involved in the workings of the government of Burkina Faso and with American interests there that may or may not be above board.
This is a well-plotted spy thriller that respects the parameters of the genre while blowing them away with a clear-eyed look at show more how our government's agencies worked to destabilize foreign governments and how racism and misogyny kept them largely composed of clean-cut white men. Which is not to say that American Spy isn't full of action-packed scenes or fascinating geopolitics. Lauren Wilkinson has managed to write a novel that is a fast-paced thriller and a nuanced exploration of what it means to be a black woman working in a field dominated by white men. show less
This is a well-plotted spy thriller that respects the parameters of the genre while blowing them away with a clear-eyed look at show more how our government's agencies worked to destabilize foreign governments and how racism and misogyny kept them largely composed of clean-cut white men. Which is not to say that American Spy isn't full of action-packed scenes or fascinating geopolitics. Lauren Wilkinson has managed to write a novel that is a fast-paced thriller and a nuanced exploration of what it means to be a black woman working in a field dominated by white men. show less
This is not your typical spy thriller. It is historical fiction about Marie Mitchell, a black woman, daughter of a Martinican mother and an American father, who becomes an FBI agent. It takes place during the Cold War, covering a time period from her childhood in the 1960s to early 1990s. She is offered an opportunity to work with the CIA, which involves meeting Thomas Sankara, a (real) leader in Burkina Faso. His political actions are prominently featured, though his interaction with Marie is fabricated.
The narrative voice is first person, as if Marie is writing a letter to her two young twin sons to document their family history. It opens and closes as a thriller, but in between we learn about Marie’s family – estrangement from show more her mother, admiration for her sister, and her father’s background as a law enforcement officer. It is a book that shifts from plot-driven to character-driven, then back again.
Significant events take place in Martinique, Burkina Faso, and New York. I particularly enjoyed reading about the culture of these regions. It is nice to see a strong African American woman play the lead role in a spy novel. It is effective in featuring the roles of race and gender in the world of espionage. While it requires a suspension of disbelief in a few places, it is a solid debut and I look forward to reading more from Wilkinson. show less
The narrative voice is first person, as if Marie is writing a letter to her two young twin sons to document their family history. It opens and closes as a thriller, but in between we learn about Marie’s family – estrangement from show more her mother, admiration for her sister, and her father’s background as a law enforcement officer. It is a book that shifts from plot-driven to character-driven, then back again.
Significant events take place in Martinique, Burkina Faso, and New York. I particularly enjoyed reading about the culture of these regions. It is nice to see a strong African American woman play the lead role in a spy novel. It is effective in featuring the roles of race and gender in the world of espionage. While it requires a suspension of disbelief in a few places, it is a solid debut and I look forward to reading more from Wilkinson. show less
Members
- Recently Added By
Lists
Best Spy Fiction
153 works; 102 members
Top Five Books of 2019
387 works; 111 members
Books recommended by Barack Obama
295 works; 28 members
Kirkus Starred Fiction Reviews of Books Published in 2019
411 works; 12 members
History: Eastern Europe
97 works; 2 members
Camp Tournament of Books 2019
6 works; 2 members
Books Read in 2019
4,052 works; 108 members
Tour of Africa
54 works; 2 members
Barack Obama's Summer Reading List 2019
10 works; 2 members
Author Information
2 Works 1,017 Members
Awards and Honors
Awards
Distinctions
Notable Lists
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- American Spy
- Original publication date
- 2019
- People/Characters
- Marie Mitchell; Thomas Sankara; Daniel Slater; Ed Ross
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Martinique, France
- Epigraph
- Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction... (show all). Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.
--Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man - First words
- I unlocked the safe beneath my desk, grabbed my old service automatic, and crept toward my bedroom doorway, stealthy until I was brought to grief by a Lego Duplo that stung the sole of my foot.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)In those ways I hope you'll be good Americans.
- Blurbers
- Kiesling, Lydia; Novic, Sara; Brinkley, Jamel; Beatty, Paul
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.6
- Canonical LCC
- PS3623.I55276
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 989
- Popularity
- 26,513
- Reviews
- 53
- Rating
- (3.55)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 17
- ASINs
- 3
