Our Friends in Beijing

OLD FRIENDS, NEW ENEMIES

Jon Swift is in trouble again. His journalism career is in freefall. He is too old to be part of the new world order and he has never learned to suck up to those in charge. But experience has taught him to trust his instincts.

When, for the first time in years, Jon runs into Lin Lifeng in a cafe in Oxford he wonders if the meeting is a coincidence. When Lin asks him to pass on a coded message, he knows it's not. Once a radical student who helped Jon broadcast the atrocities of Tiananmen Square, Lin is now a well-dressed party official with his own agenda.

Travelling to Beijing, Jon starts to follow a tangled web in which it is hard to know who are friends and who are enemies. As he ricochets across the country, Jon seeks to make sense of the ways in which China's past and present are colliding - and what that means for the future of the country and the world. Under the watchful eyes of an international network of spies, double-agents and politicians, all with a ruthless desire for power, Jon is in a high-stakes race to expose the truth, before it's too late.

“Praise for MOSCOW, MIDNIGHT Entertaining . . . the novel's pleasure lies with its voluble louche narrator - The Times Engaging, rip-roaring . . . told with a wry, tongue-in-cheek style that delights - Daily Mail Simpson knows his stuff, obviously, and his plotting is strewn with expert analysis of international affairs and insider knowledge of journalistic practice: all very entertaining - Spectator”

'fast-paced ...The novel allows Simpsons to stretch his writing muscles.' Irish Times

'All novelists draw on their own experiences to some extent in their writing, but John Simpson goes much further. In Our Friends in Beijing, his second foray into fiction, the BBC's long-serving world affairs editor reveals in public for the first time an old wound from the 30-plus war zones from which he has reported.'

Telegraph
This is a clever, atmospheric and in its best moments nail bitingly tense novel. Swift and Simpson are the ideal company for a journey down the mean streets of an alarming new world. Shots Mag

John Simpson has been the BBC's World Affairs Editor for more than half his fifty-two-year career. In his time with the BBC, he has reported on major events all over the world, and was made a CBE in the Gulf War honours list in 1991. He has twice been the Royal Television Society's Journalist of the Year, and has won three BAFTAs, a News and Current Affairs award and an Emmy. He lives in Oxford.

OLD FRIENDS, NEW ENEMIES Jon Swift is in trouble again. His journalism career is in freefall. He is too old to be part of the new world order and he has never learned to suck up to those in charge. But experience has taught him to trust his instincts. When, for the first time in years, Jon runs into Lin Lifeng in a cafe in Oxford he wonders if the meeting is a coincidence. When Lin asks him to pass on a coded message, he knows it's not. Once a radical student who helped Jon broadcast the atrocities of Tiananmen Square, Lin is now a well-dressed party official with his own agenda. Travelling to Beijing, Jon starts to follow a tangled web in which it is hard to know who are friends and who are enemies. As he ricochets across the country, Jon seeks to make sense of the ways in which China's past and present are colliding - and what that means for the future of the country and the world. Under the watchful eyes of an international network of spies, double-agents and politicians, all with a ruthless desire for power, Jon is in a high-stakes race to expose the truth, before it's too late.

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