The hotel Waldhaus in the Swiss mountain village of Waltenberg is central to the action of this epic novel, which takes place in Europe from World War I to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Here is the story of the love between Hans Kappler, a German novelist, and Lena Hotspur, an American singer; and of Hans' friendship with Max Goffard, a French journalist. It is also the story of how Michael Lilstein, a leader of the underground German communist party before World War II and an Auschwitz survivor, becomes responsible for the East German spy network. In 1956 in Waltenberg, Lilstein recruits as his mole a young Frenchman whose identity remains mysterious. At the height of the Cold War the CIA observe Lilstein and Max at Hans’s funeral, determined to flush out the mole. Waltenberg is a riveting novel of espionage and a major work of literature.

Novel straddles the years 1914 - 1991 with a mixture of fictional and real characters and fictionalized versions of real people as diverse as Martin Heidegger and Condolezza Rice.

At last here is the great French novel we have been waiting twenty years for." —Marie Claire
"A virtuoso epic novelist." —Nouvel Observateur
"Magnificent . . . so vast and so ambitious." —Sud Ouest

Hédi Kaddour is the author of three collections of poetry and of several translations from German, English, and Arabic. Waltenberg is his first novel.

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