The Devil's Alternative
First edition
|
|
| Author | Frederick Forsyth |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Thriller |
| Publisher | Hutchinson |
|
Publication date
|
1979 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 478 |
| ISBN | |
The Devil's Alternative is a novel by British writer Frederick Forsyth first published in 1979. It was his fourth full-length novel and marked a new direction in his work, setting the story in the near-future (in 1982) rather than in the recent past. The work evolved from an unfilmed screenplay entitled No Alternative.
The story opens with the discovery of a castaway in the Black Sea. Recovering in hospital in Turkey, the man is visited by Andrew Drake, an Anglo-Ukrainian. The castaway, Miroslav Kaminsky, is a Ukrainian nationalist who escaped after he was betrayed to the KGB. Drake convinces Kaminsky that they should strike a blow against the Soviet Union. Kaminsky tells Drake about Lev Mishkin and David Lazareff, two Ukrainian Jewish nationalists who have suffered lifetimes of abuse and discrimination by the anti-Semitic Soviet authorities and are ready to take any actions that strike out against the USSR.
Meanwhile, a chain of failures at the Soviet Union's plant that makes fungicide for wheat has led to the inadvertent poisoning of the wheat crop. The United States is aware of this crisis and plans to sell its food to the Soviets in exchange for political and military concessions. Hardliners in the Politburo, led by Soviet Army Marshal Kerensky and Party theoretician Vishnayev come up with a different strategy: to take the food by conquering Western Europe, insisting on ideological rather than factual grounds that the West (particularly the U.S.) will accept defeat and the resulting long-term victory of the Soviets over them rather than resort to nuclear war. Chairman Maxim Rudin, while a hard-line Communist who has ruled with an iron hand for a long time, knows that the pro-war faction's plan would result in an all-out nuclear war because the West would otherwise be vassals on a planet dominated by the Soviet bloc. However, Rudin is dying of cancer and knows that he is running out of time to prevent the faction from ousting him and starting World War III.
...
Wikipedia