The Unbeliever
The Unbeliever is fictionalised history rather than historical fiction. It is based closely on the real-life story of a Bulgarian diplomat who was executed for treason in 1964. He made a full confession in return for a promise to spare his wife, a promise which it seems was kept.
The book charts the diplomat’s growing disillusionment with the Communist regime and his progress to becoming a paid CIA agent. The narrative is presented in alternating chapters, shifting between the prisoner’s interrogation sessions and the reminiscences of his widow. The former is based on official records, the latter springs entirely from the author’s imagination.
This is an excellent account of one man’s journey from Communist freedom fighter to outright treason against the Communist regime in his native land, a regime which had given him many favours. Now that Communism has been discredited and overthrown (at least in Europe) the traitor has become the Good Guy and that is how the author clearly sees him. However, it is difficult to feel much sympathy for the protagonist, who seems to have been motivated in large part by jealousy of his more privileged colleagues and a longing for the material glamour of life in the western cities where he served as a diplomat.
