The Nine Lives of Otto Katz - Hardcover

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After a childhood in America, Canada and the UK, Jonathan Miles took a first from University College, London and his doctorate from Jesus College, Oxford. He has written, lectured and broadcast on cultural history all over the world. His previous books have earned him such press accolades as 'magisterial', 'authoritative', 'massively researched', 'compelling', and 'incisive'. He lives in Florence with his wife and daughter.

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He was one of the most effective agents ever to work for Soviet Russia. His fingerprints can be found on one world-changing event after another of the first half of the twentieth century. But who was Otto Katz?

To the FBI he was an 'extremely dangerous man'. The British Secret Service wondered if he was the 'Director of all Communist policy in the West'.

In Prague and Berlin he was a drinking companion of Franz Kafka and Bertolt Brecht. To Marlene Dietrich he was one of her many lovers. But to others, Katz was a passionate anti-fascist who witnessed Hitler's rise to power and was among the first to alert the world to the Nazi threat. He was a staunch Communist, part of the Soviet infiltration of England during the period when the Cambridge spies were being recruited. In Hollywood, he was a playboy socialite, political mentor to director Fritz Lang and a star among stars. His example inspired the character of Victor Laszlo in Casablanca and Kurt Muller, the hero of the Academy Award winning Watch on the Rhine.

To Noël Coward he was a potential double agent. In the Spanish Civil War he did Stalin's dirty work. Years later some even blamed him for the assassination of Trotsky.

In a captivating detective story, Jonathan Miles goes in search of the real Otto Katz - a brilliant, daring charmer, a double-dealer with an unquestionable taste for the finer things in life who nonetheless served one of history's darkest masters - Joseph Stalin. Using recently released FBI, MI5 and Czech files, Jonathan Miles has created an action-packed story of the life (or lives) of one of the world's most intriguing, influential and successful spies.