Helena Merriman

Tunnel 29 is a "riveting" (Wall Street Journal) book that tells the unbelievable true story of an escape tunnel under the Berlin Wall—the people who built it, the spy who betrayed it, and the media event it inspired. In September 1961, at the height of the Cold War, 22-year-old Joachim Rudolph escaped from East Germany, one of the world's most...

'Merriman excels at recreating the physicality of their experiences: the smell of dense clay, the click-clack of a woman walking down the street above in high heels... Merriman has burrowed her way deep into interviews, news reports and Stasi files to fashion an impressive real-life page-turner.' Guardian 'An audacious and compelling tale, told with narrative tension and novelistic drive, creating...