From the grand master of international suspense comes his most intriguing story ever—his own. For more than forty years, Frederick Forsyth has been writing extraordinary real-world novels of intrigue, from The Day of the Jackal on. Whether writing about the murky world of arms dealers or the intricacies of worldwide drug cartels, every plot has been chillingly plausible because every detail has been minutely researched. But what most people don’t know is that some of his greatest stories of intrigue have been in his own life. He was the RAF’s youngest pilot at the age of nineteen, barely escaped the wrath of an arms dealer in Hamburg, got strafed by a MiG during the Nigerian Civil War, landed during a bloody coup in Guinea-Bissau (and has himself been accused of helping fund a 1973 coup in Equatorial Guinea). The Stasi arrested him, the Israelis feted him, the IRA threatened him, and a certain attractive Czech secret police agent, well, her actions were a bit more . . . intimate. And that’s just for starters. Nominated for the Edgar Award for best critical/biographical work of 2015.

フレデリック・フォーサイスという稀代の語り部が、自らの人生という「最大の傑作」を冷徹かつ情熱的に解剖したのが本作です。徹底したリアリズムで世界を震撼させてきた彼の創作の源泉が、戦火や諜報活動といった死線ギリギリの体験にあることに驚かされます。一人の男が歴史の裏側を覗き見る「部外者」であり続ける矜持とその孤独に、読者は深く魂を揺さぶられるはずです。 映像作品ではスリリングなアクションが強調されますが、この本には映像で零れ落ちる「思考の沈殿」と「事実の重み」が凝縮されています。スクリーンの向こう側にある冷酷な情勢が、活字を通じて生々しい実体験として迫りくる感覚は、至高の知的興奮を約束します。虚構と現実の境界が消失するこの衝撃を、ぜひその手で直接受け止めてください。