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A gripping tale of espionage and deceit from the master of the spy novel, new to Penguin Modern Classics.

About the Author

John le Carre was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the University of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5 & 6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carre widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020. His posthumous novel, Silverview, was published in 2021.

Reviews

Intelligent, thrilling, surprising ... makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard.
*Sunday Telegraph*

Brilliant. Realistic. Constant suspense.
*Observer*

The greatest spy novelist of all time ... astounding works of the imagination.
*Daily Telegraph*

Brilliant, popular, intelligent, thrilling, suspenseful, angry, original, masterful writing. Can't be topped.
*Armando Iannucci*

An extraordinary writer who brought literary lustre and lived insight to the spy yarn.
*Ian Rankin*

One of those writers who will be read a century from now.
*Robert Harris*

His Smiley novels are key to understanding the mid-20th century.
*Margaret Atwood*

What Joseph Conrad started, John le Carré enshrined and made modern. That is the real achievement of his great novels and why they will endure ... we should see him as our contemporary Dickens.
*New Statesman*

Brilliant. Realistic. Constant suspense
*Observer*

Intelligent, thrilling, surprising ... makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard
*Sunday Telegraph*

The first le Carre novel is often dismissed as a minor work of interest only for introducing spymaster George Smiley, but it also serves as a template for later masterpieces such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Investigating whether the death of a Foreign Office official was the suicide it appeared to be, Smiley unravels a series of betrayals, both political and personal, that are all equally painful to those involved. As with his readings elsewhere in the Smiley series, Michael Jayston provides a nuanced narration that is as subtle as the unfolding events. VERDICT Because this tight, spellbinding thriller eschews the labyrinthine duplicities of later novels, while tackling the same themes, it serves as an excellent entree to le Carre's world.-Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.