Olen Steinhauer is an American writer of spy fiction novels, including The Tourist, the Milo Weaver series, and the Yalta Boulevard Sequence. Steinhauer also created the TV seriesBerlin Station, focused on a fictional Central Intelligence Agency branch operating in Berlin, which began airing in 2016.
After graduation, Steinhauer received a year-long Fulbright grant to write a novel in Romania about the Romanian Revolution. It was called Tzara's Monocle, and when he moved to New York City afterward, he used that manuscript to secure a literary agent. However, it was with another book, the historical mystery set in Eastern Europe, The Bridge of Sighs, that Steinhauer first found publication. His 2009 CIA novel, The Tourist, received positive reviews and is being developed for film by Sony Pictures Entertainment for Doug Liman to direct. During the winter of 2009-10, Steinhauer was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.
Work
The Yalta Boulevard Sequence
The Bridge of Sighs was the first in a five-book series of thrillers chronicling the evolution of a fictional Eastern European country situated in the historical location of Ruthenia during the Cold War, with one book for each decade. Each book also focuses on a different main character.
The Bridge of Sighs — Emil Brod, 1948
The Confession — Ferenc Kolyeszar, 1956
36 Yalta Boulevard — Brano Sev, 1966–1967. Also published as The Vienna Assignment
Liberation Movements — Brano Sev, Katja Drdova, Gavra Noukas, 1968 & 1975. Also published as The Istanbul Variations
Victory Square — The final book in the series, dealing with 1989, the end of communism, and the return to the main character of the first book, Emil Brod.
The Milo Weaver Series
The Tourist — The first in a series of espionage novels focused on a central character, Milo Weaver.
The Nearest Exit
An American Spy
The Last Tourist
Standalone novels
The Cairo Affair
All the Old Knives
The Middleman
RELATED READING: Robert Lance Snyder, "'Floating Unmoored': The World of 'Tourism' in Olen Steinhauer's Espionage Trilogy," Clues: A Journal of Detection 38.1 : 9-18.
