Mr. Arkadin: Aka Confidential Report: The Secret Sordid Life of an International Tycoon »

Orson Welles (1915-1985) was an Academy Award-winning director, writer, actor, and producer for film, stage, radio, and television.

The only novel by Orson Welles, a witty, madcap, pulp-noir adventure of international intrigue, blackmail, and murder

The mysterious Mr. Arkadin claims he cannot remember anything of his life prior to the moment in 1927 when he found himself alone in Zurich with two hundred thousand Swiss francs in his pocket, a sum with which he subsequently built a vast fortune. Now a fabulously wealthy and influential financier, he enlists the services of one Van Stratten, a small-time smuggler and racketeer, charging him with the task of investigating Arkadin’s forgotten past. Traveling across the world—and through the seedy underworld of postwar Europe—Van Stratten begins piecing together information for his confidential report. But for some unknown and sinisterly suspicious reason, everyone he speaks to soon turns up dead.

The work of an acknowledged genius of the stage and cinema, Mr. Arkadin: Aka Confidential Report is the basis for the controversial motion picture written, directed by, and starring Welles himself—the movie the great auteur bemoaned as “the most butchered film of my career.” Welles’s hauntingly strange and exhilarating novel remains an enigmatic expression of his intentions and an enduring example of his storytelling brilliance.

The Barnes & Noble Review

One explanation for why so many filmmakers, actual or potential, continue to use Welles as a mantle (or example) even when they can't approach his essence is that he's seen as a man who once had it all in terms of power and freedom -- even though, ironically, many of those same admirers endorse or accept the same studio protocols, such as test marketing and studio revisions, that would have made Citizen Kane impossible. Welles stubbornly insisted on keeping his freedom long after he had to relinquish his power, which makes him a troubled role model at best. Some people who continue to envy the power he once had wind up resenting the freedom he continued to exercise, especially when it became the freedom to hold back his work for one reason or another.