John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell, born 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England, is far better known as John le Carré, novelist of spys, spycraft, the Cold War, and intricate, noir-ish novels of espionage and moral ambiguity. Think of him as a modern Joseph Conrad, an updated Eric Ambler, an international Raymond Chandler. Just after WWII he cultivated a gift for languages while studying at the University of Bern in Switzerland. In 1950 he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army and worked as a Cold War interrogator in Austria. He later worked for the intelligence services MI5 and MI6 (with occasional overlapping jobs as a teacher in French and German) until the huge success of his third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). His pseudonym (French for “John the Square”) was required since he was an active Foreign Service officer, and he kept it as his books became regular bestsellers and adapted for film and television.
John le Carré’s great creation is George Smiley, a career intelligence officer with The Circus, the Brtish overseas intelligence service. Smiley is a deliberate anti-James Bond, an unglamorous intellectual who outthinks and outmaneuvers his targets, his competitors both within the service and the country’s enemies anywhere in the world. Le Carré deep and sophisticated interest in all participants of this Cold War, those witting and unwitting, make his canvas rich and broad. His elegant style elevates his novels beyond plot to psychological dramas and moral dissections. John le Carré is not only a writer of his time, but he has become an artist of our time.
P.S. If you ever get a chance to hear Cornwell read his own work, seize it. Only two titles currently have him as a reader, Agent Running in the Field and The Pigeon Tunnel, but older (sometimes abridged) titles are out there in out-of-print-land. He is a terrific reader.
A Most Wanted Man
A Most Wanted Man
From the “literary master for a generation” (The London Observer) comes a fiercely com- pelling and current novel set in Hamburg that plays to all of le Carré’s trademark strengths— Germany, rival intelligence operations, and sympathetic protagonists who discover a taste for moral integrity.
A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse round his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.
Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client’s survival becomes more important to her than her own career—or safety.
In pursuit of Issa’s mysterious past, she confronts the incon- gruous Tommy Brue, the sixty- year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg.
Annabel, Issa, and Brue form an unlikely alliance—and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the so-called War on Terror, the spies of three nations converge upon the innocents.
Poignant, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man
is alive with humor, yet prickles with tension until the last heart-stopping page. It is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.