Book Tour: Two Spies in Caracas by Moises Naim

August 22, 2021

Book Tour: Two Spies in Caracas by Moises Naim

Welcome Readers to a stop on the blog tour for Two Spies in Caracas by Moises Naim.

The Details:

Two Spies in Caracas by Moises Naim

Published: 1 August 2021

Publisher: Amazon Crossing

Genre: Political Thriller

Pages: 358

Available: papaerback, ebook, audiobook

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR:

Moisés Naím has been called “one of the world’s leading thinkers” (Prospect Magazine) and has been ranked among the top 100 global thought leaders by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. He is an internationally syndicated columnist and the host and producer of Efecto Naím, an Emmy winning weekly television program on international affairs that has been aired throughout the Americas since 2012 via NTN24/DirecTV.

Naím was the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine for 14 years and is the author of many scholarly articles and 15 books on international economics and politics. In 2011, he received the Ortega y Gasset prize, the most prestigious award for journalism in the Spanish language. His 2013 book, “The End of Power”, a New York Times bestseller, was selected by the Washington Post and the Financial Times as one of the best books of the year.

In the early 1990s, Naím served as Venezuela’s Minister of Trade and Industry, as director of Venezuela’s Central Bank, and as executive director of the World Bank. He was previously professor of business and economics and dean of IESA, Venezuela’s leading business school. Dr. Naím holds MSc and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lives in Washington, DC. For more information visit https://www.moisesnaim.com/.

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator with nearly seventy books to his name. He chaired the Translators Association for two years and served four years as a director of the British Centre for Literary Translation and four years as editor of the journal In Other Words. Recent translations include Juan Pablo Villalobos’s I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me, Julián Fuks’s Resistance, and Carola Saavedra’s Blue Flowers. For more information, visit www.danielhahn.co.uk.

The Blurb:

Venezuela, 1992. Unknown colonel Hugo Chávez stages an ill-fated coup against a government, igniting the passions of Venezuela’s poor and catapulting the oil-rich country to international attention. For two rival spies hurriedly dispatched to Caracas—one from Washington, DC, and the other from Fidel Castro’s Cuba—this is a career-defining mission.

Smooth-talking Iván Rincón of Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate needs a rebel ally to secure the future of his own country. His job: support Chávez and the revolution by rallying the militants and neutralizing any opposing agents.

Meanwhile, the CIA’s Cristina Garza will do everything in her power to cut Chávez’s influence short. Her priority: control the greatest oil reserves on the planet by ferreting out and eliminating Cuba’s principal operative.

As Chávez surges to power, Iván and Cristina are caught in the fallout of a toxic political time bomb: an intrepid female reporter and unwitting informant, a drug lord and key architect in Chávez’s rise, and personal entanglements between the spies themselves. With everything at stake, the adversaries find themselves at the center of a game of espionage, seduction, murder, and shifting alliances playing out against the precarious backdrop of a nation in free fall.

The Review:

Note: I was given a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

This book was a bit of a departure for me as I normally read historical fiction. I was intrigued by the soon to be historical aspects of the Hugo Chavez story. I admit to not knowing a great deal about South America or Venezuela before picking up this book.

The story focuses on Hugo Chavez and his rise to power after a failed coup attempt landed him in prison. Following his release he runs for the office of President and finds himself elected in a wave of populism. The description of Chavez, his personality and his demand for total loyal brought to mind other political figures. It was very interesting to follow his political career and to see how despite his desire to help the poor he seems to have done more damage than good.

I found the story of Pran, a underworld figure who runs his illegal empire from a prison is astonishing as was/is the degree of corruption in the country. I'm not sure at what point this part of the story is fiction but it was definitely interesting.

The story of the two spies took a back seat for me. Their 'love story' is rather long in the making and not very believable, but it added another layer to the story and I enjoyed see how opposing spy operations via for control in foreign countries

The book is well written and translated. The pace, while not exactly zippy, moves along at a steady pace.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to readers who enjoy political thrillers, and books about present days events that will clearly be written about for years to come.