(Knopf Publishing Group) As the Cold War began to intensify in the mid-1950s, the not-so-venerable C.I.A., referred to as “the Agency” in Lara Prescott’s sensational new novel, devoted a portion of its resources to playing the long game, and one of its objectives was to undermine the Soviet Union using their own art and literature against them. At that time, artists were sometimes taken as political prisoners, ending up in the infamous Gulag, a forced-labor prison camp, and their work was censured or banned … (read more)
