Bøger af Adam LeBor

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Budapest, September 1944. The Hungarian capital lies in the eye of the storm. Three months after D-Day, the Allies are making significant strides through Europe. For Stalin, Budapest is Moscow's gateway to the West. For Hitler, the city is a crucial bastion where the Russian's advance must be stopped. Squeezed between the two sides, with the Red Army advancing, Budapest and its inhabitants will soon pay a terrible price. Large parts of the city's Jewish population has already been deported to Auschwitz by the chillingly efficient Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann. This is the climax of Adam LeBor's epic history of Budapest during the war, the story of an authoritarian regime allied with Hitler that also tried to keep in for as long as possible with the Allies. It is a tale full of spies like the British agent Basil Davidson, of brave Hungarian aristocrats smuggling people and information out of Nazi-occupied Poland, of bureaucrats having it both ways and getting sucked into the disaster of the German invasion of Russia. From then until the apocalyptic end game, Budapest became a more and more dangerous place for Jews, anti-fascists and ordinary people. The events culminate in the Siege of Budapest, the 50-day battle in which 38,000 civilians and 100,000 Soviet troops were killed. Even as the battle rages Hungarian fascists are slaughtering Jews. Soon after the siege the heroic Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who has worked to save Jewish lives, is kidnapped and murdered by the Soviets. The story is told through the lives of a core cast of characters, including a glamorous aristocrat, a Special Operations agent, a German SS officer, a Jewish housewife who negotiated with Adolf Eichmann and a Hungarian woman trying to keep her family alive. Drawing on original research in Hungarian, German and English, and first-hand accounts, diaries, interviews and archives, The Last Days of Budapest is a vivid, dramatic and moving account of the slow death of a cosmopolitan and beautiful European city and its eventual liberation. Adam LeBor brings the skills of a thriller writer to this spellbinding work of narrative history.

There were no death certificates issued at Auschwitz. Nevertheless, Swiss banks still demand them before handing over the assets of account holders killed in the Holocaust to their surviving relatives. When the Jews of Europe entrusted their families' wealth to what they hoped would be a safe haven - the banks of Switzerland - they were wrong. Millions of dollars, deposited decades ago in good faith by Jews who were to die in the Nazi genocide, still lie in their vaults, earning interest and providing working capital for Swiss banks. However the involvement of neutral Switzerland in the finances of the Third Reich goes far beyond the dispute over dormant accounts. Swiss banks were the key foreign currency providers of the Nazi war machine; they knowingly accepted looted gold, stolen from the national banks of occupied Europe; and they operated an international banking centre for the Third Reich. Reissued with a new afterword, Adam LeBor reveals the true extent to which Swiss banks collaborated with the Nazi regime and profited from the deaths of millions of Jews.

Before his death in March 2006, Slobodan Milosevic was on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague for crimes against humanity. This engrossing biography documents the life of the former Serbian leader, whose policies instigated wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo as well as the bloody campaigns of ethnic cleansing that destroyed a once sophisticated multi-national country. Drawing on his unrivalled access to many of those closest to Milosevic, author and journalist Adam LeBor describes his subject's unhappy childhood, his marriage, and his important friendships. He offers details about the ascendancy of crime over politics in the new republic and the secret channels used by Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman as they conspired to carve up Bosnia. LeBor recounts the history of the negotiations between Milosevic and the Western diplomats, politicians, and businessmen with whom he dealt, and tells the tragic story of the wars. Finally he portrays the unprecedented international operation that brought down the Milosevic regime in 2001 and led to his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. A gripping account of Europe's first rogue leader in the post-cold war period, this book is also a revelatory look at the tragic story of the collapse of a country and the role played by the West.

Life's tough for a Gypsy detective in Budapest. The cops don't trust you because you're a Gypsy. Your fellow Gypsies, even your own family, shun you because you're a cop.The dead, however, don't care. So when Balthazar Kovacs, a detective in the city's murder squad, gets a mysterious text message on his phone, he gulps down his coffee and goes to work. The message has two parts: a photograph and an address. The photograph shows a man, in his early thirties, lying on his back with his eyes open, half-covered by a blue plastic sheet. The address is 26 Republic Square, the former Communist Party headquarters, and once the most feared building in the country. But when Kovacs arrives at Republic Square, the body is gone.Inspired by true events, the novel takes the reader to a hidden city within Budapest and an underworld that visitors never get to see: the gritty back alleys of District VIII; the endemic corruption that reaches deep into government as officials plunder state coffers at will; a rule of law bent to serve the interests of the rich and powerful; the rising power of international organized crime gangs who use the Hungarian capital as a springboard for their European operations; and a troubling look at the ghosts of Communism (and Nazism) that still haunt Budapest.

Yael Azoulay, covert negotiator for the UN secretary-general, has made a powerful enemy in Clarence Clairborne. Head of the Prometheus Group, a Washington, D.C., lobbying and security firm, he's as corrupt as they come, and fixated on revenge. Yael knows she's being followed, but Clairborne's operatives are not the only ones tracking her every move. Unexpected visitors from her past have arrived, and she won't be able to evade them for long.Driven by exceptional plotting and electrifying prose, The Reykjavik Assignment follows Yael as she fights the pull of her old life while brokering the triumph of her career: a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, between the United States and Iran. But when events in Reykjavik take a terrifying turn, the only thing that Yael cares about is preventing a desperate man from taking desperate measures to avenge his own past.

In this new international thriller from the author of The Geneva Option, UN covert negotiator Yael Azoulay is drawn into a web of betrayal and intrigue that leads from deep within America's military-industrial complex to the Middle East and beyond.Yael Azoulay went rogue in Geneva and nearly lost her life; although her physical wounds are healed, she will never be able to forget what happened. Now back in New York, when the secretary-general asks her to meet with the CEO of the Prometheus Group, a lobbying and asset management firm with extensive links to the Pentagon and dubious business interests in the volatile Middle East, she cannot refuse his request.Working under Prometheus's radar, Yael uncovers a chilling conspiracy with ties to Iran . . . and to a shocking source from her past. The end game is nothing less than a devastating?and very lucrative?new war in the Middle East. But the closer she comes to the truth, the more Yael begins to expose herself, revealing a life riddled with secrets. As she confronts the ghosts of her past, the few certainties of her life begin to crumble around her, laying bare a terrifying truth: that she has enormously powerful enemies who neither forgive, nor forget.

Yael Azoulay does the United Nations' dirty work by cutting deals that most of us never hear about. Equally at home in the caves of Afghanistan, the slums of Gaza, or corporate boardrooms all across the world, Yael believes the ends justify the means...until she's pushed way beyond her breaking point.When Yael is assigned to eastern Congo to negotiate with Jean-Pierre Hakizimani, a Hutu warlord wanted for genocide, she offers him a generous plea bargain. Thanks to Congo's abundance of a valuable mineral used in computer and cell phone production, her number one priority is maintaining regional stability. But when she discovers that Hakizimani is linked to the death of the person she loved the most?and that the UN is prepared to sanction mass murder?Yael soon realizes that salvation means not just saving others' lives but confronting her own inner demons.Spanning New York City, Africa, and Switzerland, The Geneva Option is the first in a series of gripping conspiracy thrillers, a tour de force of international espionage and intrigue.

Budapest's dark history finally catches up with Detective Balthazar Kovacs in the final instalment in Adam LeBor's Hungarian crime trilogy.

"A macabrely fascinating work?recommended."-Booklist

A LONE AGENT. AN UNIMAGINABLE CONSPIRACY. UN covert negotiator Yael Azoulay went rogue in Geneva and nearly lost her life. Her physical wounds are healed, but she will never be able to forget what happened. Now back in New York, Yael uncovers a chilling conspiracy whose end game is a devastating new war in the Middle East. But as Yael draws closer to the truth, she is forced to confront the ghosts of her past. As the few certainties of her life begin to crumble around her, a terrifying truth is laid bare: Yael has enormously powerful enemies who neither forgive, nor forget.

The death of an Arab financier reveals the dangerous fractures running through Budapest in Adam LeBor's latest dark police procedural.

A new edition of this acclaimed history of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa, with a major new afterword.

UN negotiator Yael Azoulay uncovers a people-trafficking ring with links to Iran... and Washington.

Chronicles the rise and fall of a ruthless leader who turned a vibrant and multi-ethnic country into a war-ravaged wound on the global conscience. This biography documents the life of Slobodan Milosevic, a man whose policies instigated four wars, and who exploited the most modern techniques of media management to whip up a nationalist frenzy.

Fast-paced conspiracy thriller moving between New York, Geneva and the Congo. A gripping journey through the secret corridors of power by writer and journalist Adam LeBor.

How America fell for financier Bernie Madoff's $65 billion investment scam.

From the killing fields of Rwanda and Srebrenica to those of Darfur, the United Nations has repeatedly failed to confront genocide. This title examines the role of the Secretariat, its relationship with the Security Council, and the failure of UN officials themselves to confront genocide.