The Troika: A Story of Three Families, Friendship, and the Cold War

How Cold War geopolitics challenged the bonds of lifelong friends

This now-legendary memoir written by a leader of East Germany's notorious Stasi secret police follows three expatriate families whose boys create childhood bonds in Moscow—only to find the events of the 20th century casting them in different directions and testing not only their ties but their political beliefs.

Author Markus Wolf, known in the West as "the man without a face," was a notorious shadow figure who had loomed large...