THE FIRE AGENT
Born into an aristocratic German Jewish family, Ernst Baerwald is a gifted linguist, talented musician, and fearless idealist. When he’s recruited in 1900 to become a spy - for a company that would become the notorious chemical conglomerate IG Farben—his life becomes an extraordinary adventure spanning two continents, two world wars, and impossible choices that will haunt him forever.
From Frankfurt to Milan to Tokyo, Ernst moves through a world of intrigue and passion. He battles Japan’s Yakuza while entertaining its royalty and hosts Europe’s most brilliant performers. He falls deeply in love . . . with two women. He witnesses the rise of fascism in both Japan and Germany. And when the forces of fascism in Japan meet the horrors of Hitler’s Germany, this German Jew faces an impossible choice: destroy the country he loves most or become complicit in unimaginable evil.
Based on the life of author David Baerwald’s grandfather, The Fire Agent is historical fiction that reads like a thriller.
An unforgettable, sweeping novel of espionage, love, and war that reframes our understanding of the twentieth century.
The Fire Agent is one of those big, beautiful war novels about everything at the most important moment in history, and a story of individuals that actually lived through it.
“
-Lit Hub
DAVID BAERWALD
David Baerwald was born in Oxford, Ohio, before moving to the Hudson Valley. He is a platinum-selling musician who has collaborated with Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Rikki Lee Jones, Sheryl Crow, and Bruce Springsteen, among others.
Seven years ago, when fires in LA led him to evacuate his home, he began for the first time to look through his grandfather’s diaries, photographs, and letters, and became obsessed with a family history he’d never known. That obsession led him to sell his music catalogue to underwrite the years it took him to create The Fire Agent, his first novel.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ernst Baerwald at 20, at his new flat in Milan
THE FIRE AGENT
PRAISE FOR
““A sweeping, cinematic swashbuckler of a novel…that brings the rise of global fascism during the first half of the twentieth century into sharp focus for us in the twenty-first. I wish I had an ancestor as astonishing and as honorable as Ernst Baerwald.”
—Janice P. Nimura,,
Author of Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back
“The Fire Agent is an utterly engrossing novel… David brings the secret machinery at the heart of 20th-century geopolitics roaring to life. I absolutely loved it.”
—Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds
“A novel of inspiring humanity and heartbreaking fallibility… It’s a spy novel, a war story, a love story. It is a brilliant piece of historical fiction that is hardly fictional at all.”
—Graham Yost,
Executive producer of The Americans and Slow Horses
“Historical fiction on an epic scale. A page-turner about spies in prewar Tokyo but with the weight of moral inquiry at its heart… A remarkable achievement”
—Joseph Kanon,
Author of Shanghai and The Good German