Defectors was published by Atria Books in 2017. The novel draws on the figure of Kim Philby — the most damaging Soviet mole in British intelligence history, who defected to Moscow in 1963 — but transposes the story into an American context. Frank Weeks is a former CIA officer who defected to the Soviet Union twelve years ago; his brother Simon, a publisher, is invited to Moscow to edit Frank’s memoir for Western publication.
Simon arrives in Moscow and discovers that nothing is simple: Frank’s memoir is being managed by the KGB, who want it to serve their propaganda purposes; Frank himself is drinking heavily and may be trying to communicate something beyond the official text; and the CIA has its own interest in Simon’s visit — he is being used as a conduit, though for what he cannot initially determine.
The novel’s power comes from the fraternal relationship: Simon must decide whether Frank — who betrayed his country, his colleagues, and by extension his family — can be trusted now, whether his apparent desire to reconnect is genuine or is itself another operation. The Cold War becomes a metaphor for family: the secrets that destroy trust, the loyalties that cannot survive betrayal, and the question of whether blood is thicker than ideology.
Kanon’s Moscow is oppressive and banal: not the dramatic backdrop of Bond films but a grey, surveilled, bureaucratic world where defectors discover that the paradise they chose is a prison — and that the only escape is another betrayal.
Collecting Defectors
First edition (Atria Books, New York, 2017): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$20
- Signed first edition: $20–$50