Abstract
As a version of romance and quest myth (v. ch. 3) the formula of the secret-agent story makes a characteristic distinction between the hero’s world of familiarity and the alien land of the adversary. For the dichotomy structure the English post-war position as a free-world nation opposed to the communist bloc was obviously a welcome simplification of the sometimes very complicated international relations of the inter-war period. One only has to compare Ambler’s stories from the thirties with Fleming’s from the fifties to appreciate the difference.
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© 1984 Lars Ole Sauerberg
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Sauerberg, L.O. (1984). Cold War, Détente and Secret-Agent Fiction. In: Secret Agents in Fiction. Macmillan Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17652-6_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17652-6_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-17654-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-17652-6
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