“This is indispensable reading for anyone interested in representations of espionage in the Cold War and beyond.”

—Sara Jones, author of The Media of Testimony: Remembering the East German Stasi in the Berlin Republic

“In these fascinating papers we see some of the insights gained from new literary readings of those [secret police] files, and new artistic representations of those classic Cold War figures: spies, secret police officers, and informers. A revelatory collection!”

—Katherine Verdery, Julien J. Studley Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York

“Using fascinating, specific examples that make observers and the observed come alive in the reader’s mind, Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe reveals the dynamic power play among multiple parties who constituted the oppressive political web throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR during the Cold War.”

—Susan Signe Morrison, professor of English at Texas State University

“A great intervention by a team of experts equipped to deliver a much needed comparative perspective.”

—Stephen Parker, author of Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life

“Presenting a gallery of well-chosen portraits of secret agents who worked for communist East German, Romanian, and Soviet surveillance agencies, this book illuminates the tenuous relationship between memory, discourse, and politics, mediated by the extant secret archives and movies. The chapters document Cold War spies whose complex lives and morally questionable choices enhance our understanding of life under communist dictatorship.”

—Lavinia Stan, professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia