In 1955, Katharine Clark, the first American woman wire reporter behind the Iron Curtain, saw something none of her male colleagues did. What followed became one of the most unusual adventure stories of the Cold War.

While on assignment in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Clark befriended a man who, by many definitions, was her enemy. But she saw something in Milovan Djilas, a high-ranking Communist leader who dared to question the ideology he helped establish, that made her want to work with him. It became the assignment of her life.

Against the backdrop of protests in Poland and a revolution in Hungary, she risked her life to ensure Djilas’s work made it past the watchful eye of the Yugoslavian secret police to the West. She single-handedly was responsible for smuggling his scathing anti-Communism manifesto, The New Class, out of Yugoslavia and into the hands of American publishers. The New Class would go on to sell three million copies worldwide, become a New York Times bestseller, be translated into over 60 languages, and be used by the CIA in its covert book program.

Meticulously researched and written by Clark’s great-niece, Katharine Gregorio, The Double Life of Katharine Clark illuminates a largely untold chapter of the twentieth century. It shows how a strong-willed, fiercely independent woman with an ardent commitment to truth, justice and freedom put her life on the line to share ideas with the world, ultimately transforming both herself―and history―in the process.

Review:

Intriguing, informative, and descriptive!

The Double Life of Katharine Clark is the insightful, meticulous story of Katharine Clark’s personal and professional successes, frustrations, experiences, sacrifices, and accomplishments as an International News Service journalist stationed in Eastern Europe during the early stages of the Cold War.

The writing is clear and precise. And the novel is a compelling, absorbing tale of one woman’s dedication and passion, under extremely dangerous circumstances, to help record and have published a manuscript and a series of articles dictated and written by a high-ranking communist officer, Milovan Djilas, who was subsequently arrested and jailed for his criticism of the Yugoslavia government.

The Double Life of Katharine Clark is, ultimately, a valuable, suspenseful, insightful biography by Gregorio inspired by real-life events that does an exceptional job of highlighting her impressive research into her great aunt’s plight as a female journalist during the 1950s and her extraordinary courage and determination to do whatever it took to have an important story told and heard.

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.