I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes - A Review

Terry Hayes' I am Pilgrim is probably one of the best spy thriller books I've read in recent days. More than 800 pages long but packed with heart pounding actions, deep character development along with the writer's observations of socioeconomic malice abundant in many parts of the world. The protagonist and the main villain, both of them brilliant and determined in their own cause, and the various events that led to the final climax was breathtaking. This was a page turner and the writer Terry Hayes is prolific in his words, describing scenes in detail as if I was watching a movie. It proves the brilliance of the writer's screenwriting ability that he transformed into this unputdownable book.

Some of the acute observations that protagonists and other characters made are memorable. Here is a quote:

"Edmund Burke said the problem with war is that it usually consumes the very things that you’re fighting for—justice, decency, humanity—and I couldn’t help but think of how many times I had violated our nation’s deepest values in order to protect them."

Another quote that I found to be profound when the protagonist visits a Holocaust museum with his father and looked at a heartbreaking photo:

"just a lonely woman with a baby in her arms and her other two children holding tight to her skirt. Stoic, unwavering, supporting their tiny lives—helping them as best as any mother could—she walked them toward the gas chamber. You could almost hear the silence, smell the terror. "

In the very end, in the book's acknowledgement section that most readers avoid to read, Terry Hayes mentioned this particular photo again:

"on a visit to the concentration camp at Natzweiler-Struthof—a grim and terrible place where I stood alone for a long time looking at a photo of a woman with her children on their way to the gas chamber, and the germ of an idea for a novel was born."

The same photo was mentioned several times when the protagonist reflected on the meaning of humanity and how the vicious wars make us forget the horrible past and humanity repeats its terrible mistake again and again.

I am Pilgrim is a good book to read.