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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ambler on the Post Colonial World, February 9, 2004
Eric Ambler became famous with the suspense novels he wrote in the late 1930's. He saw the evil of facism spreading throughout Europe and used contemporary events as the backdrops for his stories. His stories incorporate the struggle between the liberal values of the Western Democracies and the warped values of the facist police state. With perfect hind sight, we know that Eric Ambler got it right. He was no appeaser and had no problems in knowing and saying that Nazi Germany and Facist Italy were deeply evil states. After the Second World War, Ambler's first books picked up many of the same themes he developed in his pre-war stories. The locale shifted from Western Europe to the newly Communist Eastern Europe and Balkans. Ambler knew evil when he saw facism and he recognized it again in the newly totalitarian Communist police states. Ambler was no fellow traveler and once again history showed that he was right in his assesment. State of Seige was written in 1956 and takes place in a newly independent Southeast Asian nation. An Islamic Fundamentalist military coup is taking place, and an English engineer gets front row seats to the proceedings. This book was published two years after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and during the middle of Britain's sucessful anti-communist struggle in Malaysia. With his usual nose for being in the right place at the right time, Ambler gives us his take on the newly indpendent nations of Southeast Asia. Without giving too much away, Ambler once again got it right in his assesment of history. As usual, Ambler's writing is elegant. State of Seige is a straight forward story and lacks the usual Ambler twists and turns. It is both a great suspense story and an opportunity to see how an English writer viewed the end of colonialism. It is an interesting take on the post colonial world worthy of Graham Greene or Jean Larteguy.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Master of the Espionage Novel, August 20, 2006
Ambler's novel takes place on an island republic near to Indonesia. There is going to be a coup d'etat, and Steve Fraser stumbles on some of the planning the night before. He overhears a conversation between two army men, one of whom he knows. When confronted by the "Major" he first feigns ignorance and then unconcern. Steve is leaving for home in three days, and local politics is none of his concern.
He is offered the use of his friends apartment for the three days he will be in the capital city before his flight. Steve makes a deal with a local acquaintance (of euroasian background) to keep him 'company' until his plane is ready to leave. It's all very quaint, in an ex-patriot english style. Everything on the up and up and no one getting hurt in the end.
There's just one little problem, his friend's apartment is in the building that holds the local radio station and is to become the central headquarters for the coup d'etat. There are lots of threats, bombings and shooting going on after the first day. But, with true anglo-saxon stiff-upperlip, Fraser keeps his head and is able to survive when all around him are being killed. He even has time to buy the girl a present before he leaves the island for home.
A delightful read from a time of great naivite, when a European was able to outwit the natives without getting his shirt bloody.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great Ambler novel, August 14, 2006
"State of Siege" takes your mind on vacation in space and time - a vacation where an exotic spot for a Westerner suddenly turns into a hellhole. It follows Ambler's familiar formula of an average Englishman traveling abroad who is caught up in intrigue. In this case, Steve Fraser is winding up a three-year electrical engineering contract working on dam construction in an Indonesia-like island in the mid-1950s. As he departs, a coup d'etat breaks out, with an incompetent and corrupt post-colonial government suddenly challenged by a nationalist and Muslim military faction. They haven't got any solutions to their nation's problems but expertly capitalize on popular resentments against foreigners. Fraser and a girlfriend, taken prisoner, finds themselves thrust unwillingly into an ambiguous center of action as they try to read the mind and motives of their captors, with their lives on the line. The plot remains surprisingly fresh despite the book's being written a half-century ago. Ambler's writing is elegant and spare as always, with small truths simply put, with larger truths hinted at.
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