John le Carré’s Post–Cold War Fiction

by Robert Lance Snyder
John le Carré’s Post–Cold War Fiction
Author: Robert Lance Snyder
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2018-02-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0826274129
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This is an analysis of the first 10 post—Cold War novels of one of the most significant ethicists in contemporary fiction. This book challenges distinctions between “popular” and “serious” literature by recognizing le Carré as one of the most significant ethicists in contemporary fiction, contributing to an overdue reassessment of his literary stature. Le Carré’s ten post–Cold War novels constitute a distinctive subset of his espionage fiction in their response to the momentous changes in geopolitics that began in the 1990s. Through a close reading of these novels, Snyder traces how—amid the “War on Terror” and transnationalism—le Carré weighs what is at stake in this conflict of deeply invested ideologies.

A Delicate Truth

by John le Carré
A Delicate Truth
Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101618027
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From the New York Times bestselling author of A Legacy of Spies. "A novel that beckons us beyond any and all expectations."—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post A counter-terrorist operation, code-named Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister’s personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be—or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher “Kit” Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit’s daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?

The Tailor of Panama

by John le Carré
The Tailor of Panama
Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2015-09-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101968338
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From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Legacy of Spies and The Night Manager, now an AMC miniseries He is Harry Pendel: Exclusive tailor to Panama’s most powerful men. Informant to British Intelligence. The perfect spy in a country rife with corruption and revolution. What his “handlers” don’t realize is that Harry has a hidden agenda of his own. Deceiving his friends, his wife, and practically himself, he’ll weave a plot so fabulous it exceeds his own vivid imagination. But when events start to spin out of control, Harry is suddenly in over his head—thrown into a lethal maze of politics and espionage, with unthinkable consequences. . . . Praise for The Tailor of Panama “Entertaining . . . a riotous, readable novel . . . A worthy successor to Graham Greene’s most wicked entertainments.”—The New York Times “Riveting . . . Le Carré has cut another masterpiece.”—Los Angeles Times “What makes le Carré the reigning grand master of espionage fiction? . . . Craft, certainly; he maintains an almost magnificent control of material, pace, dialogue, characterization.”—The Baltimore Sun “Brilliant . . . Le Carré remains fair in front of his field, a startlingly up-to-date storyteller who writes as well about the shadows around the power elite as anyone alive.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Absolute Friends

by John le Carré
Absolute Friends
Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2004-01-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0759508690
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Today, Mundy is a down-at-the-heels tour guide in southern Germany, dodging creditors, supporting a new family, and keeping an eye out for trouble while in spare moments vigorously questioning the actions of the country he once bravely served. And trouble finds him, as it has before, in the shape of an old German student friend, radical, and onetime fellow spy, the crippled Sasha, seeker after absolutes, dreamer, and chaos addict. After years of trawling the Middle East and Asia as an itinerant university lecturer, Sasha has yet again discovered the true, the only, answer to life-this time in the form of a mysterious billionaire philanthropist named Dimitri. Thanks to Dimitri, both Mundy and Sasha will find a path out of poverty, and with it their chance to change a world that both believe is going to the devil. Or will they? Who is Dimitri? Why does Dimitri's gold pour in from mysterious Middle Eastern bank accounts? And why does his apparently noble venture reek less of starry idealism than of treachery and fear? Some gifts are too expensive to accept. Could this be one of them? With a cooler head than Sasha's, Mundy is inclined to think it could. In Absolute Friends, John le Carre delivers the masterpiece he has been building to since the fall of communism: an epic tale of loyalty and betrayal that spans the lives of two friends from the riot-torn West Berlin of the 1960s to the grimy looking-glass of Cold War Europe to the present day of terrorism and new alliances. This is the novel le Carre fans have been waiting for, a brilliant, ferocious, heartbreaking work for the ages.

A Legacy of Spies

by John le Carré
A Legacy of Spies
Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2017-09-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0735225125
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The undisputed master returns with his first Smiley novel in more than twenty-five years--a #1 New York Times bestseller and ideal holiday gift. Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications. Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.

A Perfect Spy

by John le Carré
A Perfect Spy
Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2011-07-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101535458
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“The best English novel since the war.” -- Philip Roth Over the course of his seemingly irreproachable life, Magnus Pym has been all things to all people: a devoted family man, a trusted colleague, a loyal friend—and the perfect spy. But in the wake of his estranged father’s death, Magnus vanishes, and the British Secret Service is up in arms. Is it grief, or is the reason for his disappearance more sinister? And who is the mysterious man with the sad moustache who also seems to be looking for Magnus? In A Perfect Spy, John le Carré has crafted one of his crowning masterpieces, interweaving a moving and unusual coming-of-age story with a morally tangled chronicle of modern espionage.

The Secret Pilgrim

by John le Carré
The Secret Pilgrim
Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1524797626
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The acclaimed novel featuring George Smiley, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Legacy of Spies and The Night Manager, now an AMC miniseries The rules of the game, and of the world, have changed. Old enemies now yield to glasnost and perestroika. The killing shadows of the Cold War are flooded with light. The future is unfathomable. To train new spies for this uncertain future, one must show them the past. Enter the man called Ned, the loyal and shrewd veteran of the Circus. With the inspiration of his inscrutable mentor George Smiley, Ned thrills all as he recounts forty exhilarating years of Cold War espionage across Europe and the Far East—an electrifying, clandestine tour of honorable old knights and notorious traitors, triumph and failure, passion and hate, suspicion, sudden death, and old secrets that haunt us still. Praise for The Secret Pilgrim “Intriguing . . . magisterial . . . The many ingredients are skillfully marshaled. . . . Lucidly and elegantly controlled.”—The New York Times Book Review “Scorching . . . fascinating . . . seductive . . . a dazzler.”—Entertainment Weekly “Powerful . . . a highly absorbing tale.”—Newsday “Extraordinary.”—USA Today

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

by John le Carre
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Author: John le Carre
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0743457900
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George Smiley is assigned to uncover the identity of the double agent operating in the highest levels of British Intelligence.

Agent Running in the Field

by John le Carré
Agent Running in the Field
Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1984878883
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“[Le Carré’s] novels are so brilliant because they’re emotionally and psychologically absolutely true, but of course they’re novels.” —New York Times Book Review A thrilling tale for our times from the undisputed master of the spy genre Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie. Nat is not only a spy, he is a passionate badminton player. His regular Monday evening opponent is half his age: the introspective and solitary Ed. Ed hates Brexit, hates Trump and hates his job at some soulless media agency. And it is Ed, of all unlikely people, who will take Prue, Florence and Nat himself down the path of political anger that will ensnare them all. Agent Running in the Field is a chilling portrait of our time, now heartbreaking, now darkly humorous, told to us with unflagging tension by the greatest chronicler of our age.