"The great advantage of innocence is that we feel a certain pleasure when we lose it."
"Filby. This young Englishman did not inspire any confidence in me when I recruited him. Unpleasant, withdrawn, with a pronounced stutter... That summer of 1933, he desperately searched for meaning in his existence. He became my husband and the best in the job. Elusive, without emotions, betrayal was a game to him. Was his role as a double agent enough for him?"

Englishman Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby sneaks aboard the Russian cargo ship "Dolmatova" in 1963, quietly departing from the port of Beirut. A spy in the service of the Soviet Union, he escapes from the Lebanese capital with a bag of clothes on his shoulder and no certainty about his future in Moscow. Will the Soviets welcome him into their ranks of espionage? Will the Great Game he plays with such zeal have a third act? Or does the Heart of Darkness in Moscow have another destination in mind for him?

"Philby: Portrait of a Spy in His Youth" is an excellent narrative about one of the most fascinating and enigmatic secret agents, who kept his friends, his loves, and the superpowers of the time in complete awe until the end of his life.
Within its pages, the company of famous spies who emerged from the left-wing circles of Cambridge University in the early 1930s parade by - Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt - as well as the active Viennese communist Lizzie Friedman, who became Philby's wife, and a series of historical figures. The novel's settings include Moscow, 1930s Vienna, the Spanish Civil War, London, Gibraltar, Cairo, and Vichy France in 1940, as well as Beirut.