Adam LeBor is a British author, journalist, writing coach and editorial trainer. Born in London in 1961, he worked as a foreign correspondent from 1991 for many years but is now based in London. Mostly based in Budapest, he also lived in Berlin and Paris and spent substantial amounts of time reporting from the former Yugoslavia.[1] [2]
He covered the collapse of Communism and the Yugoslav wars for The Independent and The Times and has worked in more than thirty countries, some of which inspired his book writing. He currently contributes to The Times, the Financial Times, where he reviews thrillers, The Critic, Monocle and several other publications. He works as an editorial trainer and writing coach at the Financial Times, Citywire and Monocle and is a former contributor to Harry's Place.
LeBor has written eight non-fiction books, including Hitler's Secret Bankers, which exposed Swiss complicity with the Nazis and which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, a biography of Slobodan Milosevic, and City of Oranges, an account of Jewish and Arab families in Jaffa, which was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize. His books have been published in fourteen languages including Chinese, Hebrew and Japanese.
He has written seven novels including Dohany Street, District VIII and Kossuth Square, a trilogy featuring Balthazar Kovacs, a Gypsy detective in the Budapest police murder squad, and a trilogy of thrillers featuring Yael Azoulay, an Israeli woman who works as the secret negotiator for the United Nations Secretary General. LeBor's first novel, the Budapest Protocol was partly inspired by a US military intelligence document, Intelligence Report EW-Pa 128, dated 27 November 1944, datelined London, which was declassified by the US National Archives in 1996. The document, known as the Red House Report, also featured in LeBor's non-fiction work, Hitler's Secret Bankers. The Red House Report is based on information supplied by an agent of French intelligence, who attended a meeting of Nazi officials and German industrialists at the Maison Rouge (Red House) hotel in Strasbourg on 10 August 1944. The report, a copy of which is included in The Budapest Protocol, outlines the industrialists' plans for the post-war resurrection of Germany. While some have questioned the document's authenticity, it includes the date of declassification, 6 May 1996, and the authorisation code: NND765055. National Archives and Records Administration archivist Tom McAnear identified the series (NND 765055) noting that it refers to over 2,000 boxes and declared that without more information in the way of a citation there is no way to easily locate this document or verify authenticity.
LeBor's first non-fiction book, A Heart Turned East, published in 1997, examined the lives of Muslim minorities in Europe and the United States. His other non-fiction titles include: