The Company: The CIA and Intelligence Community (2002)

Robert Littell (born January 8, 1935) is an American novelist and former journalist who resides in France.[1] He specialises in spy novels that often concern the CIA and the Soviet Union.

Robert Littell was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 8, 1935, to a Jewish family, of Russian Jewish origin.[2] He is a 1956 graduate of Alfred University in western New York. He spent four years in the U.S. Navy and served at times as his ship's navigator, antisubmarine warfare officer, communications officer, and deck watch officer.

Later Littell became a journalist and worked many years for Newsweek during the Cold War. He was a foreign correspondent for the magazine from 1965 to 1970.

Littell is an amateur mountain climber and is the father of award-winning novelist Jonathan Littell. His brother, Alan Littell (born 1929), is also an author and journalist.

He is the brother-in-law of the French writer Bernard du Boucheron.[3]
Bibliography
Novels

The Defection of A. J. Lewinter (1973)
Sweet Reason (1974)
The October Circle (1975)
Mother Russia (1978)
The Debriefing (1979)
The Amateur (1981)
The Sisters (1986)
The Revolutionist (1988)
The Once and Future Spy (1990)
An Agent in Place (1991)
The Visiting Professor (1994)
Walking Back the Cat (1997)
The Company (2002)
Legends (2005)
Vicious Circle (2006)
The Stalin Epigram (2009)
Young Philby (2012)
A Nasty Piece of Work (2013)
The Mayakovsky Tapes (2016)
Comrade Koba (2019)
A Plague on Both Your Houses: A Novel in the Shadow of the Russian Mafia (2024)

Semi-fiction

If Israel Lost the War (alternate history) (with Richard Z. Chesnoff and Edward Klein) (1969)

Non-fiction

For the Future of Israel (with Shimon Peres) (1998)

Films and Television

The Amateur (1981 film)
The Company (miniseries)
Legends (TV series)

Awards

The Defection of A. J. Lewinter. 1973 British Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger Award for fiction.
Legends. 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category.

References

Video Interview with Robert Littell via France 24.
Littell, Robert. "A legend in his own time." Interview by Ali Karim. January Magazine, n.d. Retrieved 7 August 2014.

Corty, Bruno. À la rencontre de l'autre Littell, Le Figaro, 21 March 2009.

External links

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All Things Considered review of several books including Legends.
Robert Littell at IMDb
January Magazine interview
Feature: "On Writing Young Philby" in Shots Ezine November 2012

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National

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Academics

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People

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Categories:

1935 birthsLiving people20th-century American novelists21st-century American novelistsAlfred University alumniAmerican male journalistsJournalists from New York CityNewsweek peopleWriters from BrooklynNovelists from New York CityUnited States Navy officersAmerican male novelistsAmerican expatriates in France20th-century American journalists20th-century American male writers21st-century American male writers21st-century American non-fiction writersJewish American journalistsJewish American novelistsAmerican people of Russian-Jewish descent21st-century American Jews

The Company: A Novel of the CIA is an American novel written by Robert Littell and published by The Overlook Press in 2002. The plot interweaves the professional lives of both historical and fictional characters in the field of international espionage between June 1950 and August 1995.

The book was a New York Times bestseller and received wide critical acclaim.[1]

It is the basis of a 2007 miniseries starring Michael Keaton, Chris O'Donnell, and Alfred Molina.
Notable historical characters

The plot includes numerous characters based on historical persons, with varying degrees of verisimilitude.

The following is a list of the historical persons who speak or interact with other characters in the novel:

Martin Bormann (as Martin Dietrich)
Reinhard Gehlen
Yuri Andropov
Kim Philby
James Angleton
Lucian Truscott
William Colby
Richard Helms
James Reston
Dick Bissell
Llewellyn Thompson
Judith Campbell Exner[2]
Allen Dulles
Dwight Eisenhower
Sam Giancana
Mikhail Gorbachev
E. Howard Hunt
Lyndon B. Johnson
John F. Kennedy
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.
Robert F. Kennedy
Nikita Khrushchev
Manuel Piñeiro
Johnny Roselli
Mstislav Rostropovich
Pope John Paul I
Frank Sinatra
Fidel Castro
Harry Truman
Frank Wisner
James Baker
Ronald Reagan
Bill Clark
Boris Yeltsin
William Casey
Vladimir Kryuchkov

In addition, William King Harvey does not appear by name, but the character "Harvey Torriti, a.k.a. the Sorcerer" is a very thinly-disguised version of Harvey.
References

"Hardcover Fiction". The New York Times. 2002-04-28. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
The novel refers to her as Judy Exner in events taking place as early as 1960 though she was then divorced from actor William Campbell and used his surname. She did not marry Dan Exner until the 1970s.

This is in keeping with the author's practice of using consistent names for people or organizations whose historical names changed over time like the KGB for the organization since it was at various times known as the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB, and finally KGB).