A novel of love and espionage · 1975–1976
A Time to Forget in East Berlin
Under the Wall, a new name. A new life. A love that cannot be kept.
East Berlin, 1975
A Time to Forget in East Berlin, published in 2022, is the second novel in CG Fewston’s Cold War trilogy. Several months after A Time to Love in Tehran, former CIA officer John Lockwood is living under a new name in East Berlin, where he is drawn to Antonina “Nina” Rosenberg as the Stasi recruits him for another mission.
The Prairies Book Review called it “vivid, nuanced, and poetic.” Ian Skewis called it “a spellbinding tale of love and espionage set under the looming shadow of the Berlin Wall in 1975.” Midwest Book Review described it as a story in which the personal and the political meet “in delightful, refreshingly evocative ways.”
It is the second of three interconnected novels. A Time to Love in Tehran is set in Iran in 1974. A Time to Remember in Moscow follows in the Soviet Union in 1977–1979. Read as a whole, the trilogy moves from the Garden of Eden, to the Great Flood, to Redemption.
Praise
“A spellbinding tale of love and espionage set under the looming shadow of the Berlin Wall in 1975… A mesmerising read full of charged eroticism.”
Ian Skewis, Associate Editor, Bloodhound Books
“Vivid, nuanced, and poetic… Fewston avoids familiar plot elements of espionage fiction, and he is excellent when it comes to emotional precision and form.”
The Prairies Book Review
“An engrossing story of clandestine espionage… a testament to the lifestyle encountered in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War.”
Lone Star Literary Life
“A Time to Forget in East Berlin is a dream-like interlude of love and passion in the paranoid and violent life of a Cold War spy. The meticulous research is evident on every page.”
Matthew Harffy, author of the Bernicia Chronicles
“There is no better way for readers interested in Germany’s history and the dilemma and cultures of the two Berlins to absorb this information than in a novel such as this.”
D. Donovan, Midwest Book Review
“An exhilarating journey… with poise and skill, Fewston navigates the psychological and physical terrain of this tale of love, passion, duty, regret, divided loyalties, and betrayal. The novel is vintage espionage.”
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