The Soul of Viktor Tronko (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries)
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Marais came from Dutch and French Huguenot ancestors who had helped pioneer South Africa; his own earliest formal schooling, though, was in English. He had spent years of his young adulthood in London, studying medicine and law, and he wrote English prose fluidly, even gracefully. Nevertheless in his middle age, from resentment over Britain’s war against the Boers, he renounced English and composed his poetry in Afrikaans. The Soul of the White Ant was written in Afrikaans; The Soul of the Ape, earlier, had been written in English. It is entirely typical of the warps and wobbles of factuality in the Eugène Marais story that the first of those two is not actually a book about ants, that the second is not actually about apes, and that the pair were composed in two different languages. Kessler has now spent almost three years trying to chart those warps and wobbles.
He has not been attempting to do an objective biography. He has thought of the work rather as a biographical essay, a personal meditation on Marais’s life and ideas. The partial draft on his desk runs to three hundred pages, large sections of which may have to be thrown away as Kessler locates further documentary material, if he ever does. His working title is The Soul of Eugène Marais.
Kessler likes the title but has sometimes wished he had never begun this project. Today, just back at the work following a disruption, freshly stitched and bandaged and drugged, he is having particular trouble concentrating.
He has tracked down and corresponded with Eugène Marais’s granddaughter, a middle-aged woman in Pretoria, who was generous enough to send him photocopies of a sheaf of old letters. After some coaxing she also loaned him a diary, a fascinating field journal from the years of the termite observations, which the United States Postal Service managed with divine intervention not to lose. He also traced the original English translator of the termite book to her gravestone in London and then to her next of kin, who knew nothing whatsoever about Eugène Marais. On the same trip he spent a day at the British Museum reading the letters that had passed between Marais and that translator, and to Kessler’s surprise the curator even allowed him to carry away photocopies. Kessler still isn’t sure why Marais, a fluent English stylist who only avoided the language for political reasons, should have needed a translator at all; but that’s the least of Kessler’s problems. The letters date mainly from 1935, the year before Marais died.
During that year Marais seems to have suffered physically, from recurrent attacks of malaria and also presumably from his morphine addiction. In one letter he described himself as writing in bed, “under the spur and inspiration of enduring pain.” In a following letter he was much more cheerful, buoyed by the dream of seeing both his termite and his primate books published at last. “You see that your kindly enthusiasm has infected me!” he told the translator. “The thought of reaching a bigger public intrigues me.” That was the last letter.
Five months later he shot himself. But whether the suicide was provoked by his illness, or by a transient spell of narcotized gloom, or by unendurable bitterness over the world’s neglect, or some other possibility, Kessler is not in position to say.
Gin, he thinks. Two hours have passed and Kessler has reread his way fifty pages back into the typescript. A single minuscule alteration has been made by pencil, barely more than the correction of a typo. He intends to keep reading all afternoon if his body will stand it. Lunch he can do without. Lunch would just make him sleepy. A little gin, though, will help focus the brain.
He walks to the kitchen. But there is no gin to be had.
The freezer compartment is barren except for one tray of ice, a bag of bagels, a turkey potpie, three ring notebooks wrapped inside a plastic bag and bound tightly with duct tape, and a pair of Groucho glasses, which stare vacantly back at Kessler while the frozen white vapors foam and tumble.
Readers’ Guide for
The Soul of Viktor Tronko
Discussion Questions
What role did all the information Quammen included about Eugène Marais play in the novel? Why was Michael Kessler interested in the scientist? What significance does it have that Kessler wanted to call his biography of the man The Soul of Eugène Marais?
How does the structure and style of the novel relate to its subject? What is the theme (as opposed to the subject) of The Soul of Viktor Tronko?
The world of spies and spying is often referred to as a “wilderness of mirrors.” What does this mean? How does Quammen make use—although nonliterally—of that phrase?
Since this novel takes as its inspiration real events—the defections of Yuri Nosenko and Anatoliy Golitsyn—why do you think Quammen chose to write the book as fiction rather than nonfiction? What can fiction do that nonfiction can’t, and vice versa?
Compare this to other stories of espionage you may have read. What does Quammen do differently? What aspects of the novel are similar to others dealing with the same subject?
Suggestions for Further Reading
I’ve divided this list into two parts: Cold War Spy Fiction and Nonfiction.
Cold War Spy Fiction
The two major Cold War spy novelists in Britain are John le Carré and Len Deighton. Although they each make use of a different narrative style, they share subject matter and theme.
Deighton wrote many thrillers, but it’s his terrific series of novels—three trilogies in total—that feature MI6 operative Bernard Samson, that are my favorites by a long shot. These three trilogies absolutely must be read in order. They include Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match; Spy Hook, Spy Line, Spy Sinker; and Faith, Hope, and Charity. There’s a tenth novel, Winter, that many readers would recommend reading first, as in many ways it sets the stage for the Bernard Samson titles. I read it long after I finished the three trilogies and didn’t feel I had lost anything in my understanding of or appreciation for Deighton’s books.
To me, John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the ne plus ultra of espionage fiction. I reread it every few years (even though at this point I do know who the traitor is!). Like Quammen’s novel, it draws its inspiration from real events that shook the secret services of both Britain and the United States.
The Untouchable by John Banville is a fictional biography of a man who spent many years in MI6 and then went on to a storied career as an art adviser to the Queen of England, until it was revealed that he’d long been a Soviet spy. (This is not giving anything away: it’s where the novel begins.) Like le Carré does in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Banville has rendered into fiction the life of a real individual, Sir Antony Blunt, Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures.
Before he became a writer famous for the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming worked for MI6, so his fiction is informed by real experience in the field. Although Bond has many adventures throughout the series, From Russia with Love, in which he’s trying to remain alive and destroy members of Russian counterintelligence agents, is my favorite.
Many people have seen Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate about a dastardly assassination plot either in its original 1962 version, or the remade film of 2004. Both are great, but the book is even better.
Like Len Deighton, American Charles McCarry has a continuing character, poet and spy Paul Christopher. My two favorites of these engrossing thrillers are The Tears of Autumn and The Last Supper. Trust me, after reading The Tears of Autumn you’ll never think about the JFK assassination except through McCarry’s all too plausible explanation. And, like The Soul of Viktor Tronko, The Last Supper deals with the possibility of a Russian agent in the CIA. Like le Carré, who worked for MI6 in England, McCarry worked for the CIA in the United States, which gives a certain amount of verisimilitude to his novels.
Nonfiction
For the real story translated into fiction so well by John le Carré in Tinker, Tailor, take a look at Andrew Boyle’s The Fourth Man: The Definitive Account of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean and Who Recruited Them to Spy for Russia
Spyca
tcher by Peter Wright is another account of tracking down Russian agents in Britain’s security services.
A basic book for anyone interested in the American intelligence agencies since World War II (when the CIA first came into existence) is Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. This covers in some detail the events that David Quammen fictionalized in The Soul of Viktor Tronko.
Wilderness of Mirrors by David Martin also looks at facts surrounding the two Russian defectors, Yuri Nosenko and Anatoliy Golitsyn, and the effect their contradictory stories had on the CIA itself and particularly its director of counterintelligence, James Angleton.
For a biography of Angleton, check out Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton—CIA’s Master Spy Hunter by Tom Mangold. It’s pretty unsympathetic to Angleton.
Tennent H. Bagley’s Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games is yet another look at the Nosenko/Golitsyn issue. Bagley was the CIA supervisor over Nosenko’s debriefing, and he is not as hard on Angleton as many other former agents are.
About the Author
Photo © Lynn Donaldson
David Quammen is an author and journalist whose twelve books include The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, and most recently Spillover, a work on the science, history, and human impacts of emerging diseases (especially viral diseases), which was short-listed for seven national and international awards. In the past thirty years he has also published a few hundred pieces of short nonfiction—feature articles, essays, columns—in magazines such as Harper’s, National Geographic, Outside, Esquire, The Atlantic, Powder, and Rolling Stone. He writes occasional Op-Eds for the New York Times and reviews for the New York Times Book Review. Quammen has been honored with an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is a three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award. He is a contributing writer for National Geographic, in whose service he travels often, usually to wild and remote places. When not traveling, he lives in Bozeman, Montana.
About Nancy Pearl
Nancy Pearl is a librarian and lifelong reader. She regularly comments on books on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Her books include 2003’s Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason; 2005’s More Book Lust: 1,000 New Reading Recommendations for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason; Book Crush: For Kids and Teens: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Interest, published in 2007; and 2010’s Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers. Among her many awards and honors are the 2011 Librarian of the Year Award from Library Journal, the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, the 2010 Margaret E. Monroe Award from the Reference and Users Services Association of the American Library Association, and the 2004 Women’s National Book Association Award, given to “a living American woman who . . . has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation.”
About Book Lust Rediscoveries
Book Lust Rediscoveries is a series devoted to reprinting some of the best (and now out-of-print) novels originally published from 1960 to 2000. Each book is personally selected by Nancy Pearl and includes an introduction by her, as well as discussion questions for book groups and a list of recommended further reading.