Peter Elyakim Taussig

Imposter Peter Elyakim Taussig

"I am a crook just like every other law-abiding citizen." That is how the protagonist of this surreal tragicomic novel introduces himself. "A law-abiding citizen is just someone who hasn't been caught." Once an international concert pianist whose travels afforded a convenient cover for clandestine services for spy agencies, he is now condemned to live out his life on commercial airplanes, never being able to set foot outside an airport. This is how he manages, for a while at least, to elude his pursuers, the CIA, the KGB, the FBI, and the Israeli Mossad. They want him for tax fraud, espionage, treason, and a couple of Imperial Russian postage stamps that have something etched on their gummed backs. "I am like the Flying Dutchman," he muses, "Or rather an avian hamster." Part spy thriller part tale of redemption, the plot, like its protagonist, flits from Tel-Aviv, to New York, to Moscow, Mexico City, Caracas, and Toronto. Drawn in vivid colors on the grim backdrop of the Cold War, it is a meditation on the many types of incarceration we humans endure in our lives, whether imposed on us by others or freely chosen. Though both the author and his fictitious namesake were at one time concert pianists, any further resemblance between them is purely coincidental.