#ReadThis #WhomYouKnow #TheSpyWhoCameInFromTheCold #JohnleCarre #leCarre The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by JOHN LE CARRÉ @lecarre_news @PenguinBooks #LondonPeachy #EnglandPeachy A Classic Since 1963
Previously on Whom You Know, we first reviewed le Carre's latest:
A Legacy of Spies is the third of three in a series that started in 1963 with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, which we now conclude is an absolute timeless masterpiece. We cannot get enough of this extraordinary talent and this must be on your priority read list this weekend! Of course it is far less confusing to read the newest if you actually start at the beginning, so we'd recommend that you start here. Being the aggressor, having a commitment to the mission where the ends justify the means, and being so driven to reach the summit even if it means your own personal complete demise in a Dickensian manner...le Carre perfectly defines the life of a spy. The Cold War is most chilly and Mundt is magnificently monstrous.
Fifty years later, le Carre pens a priceless introduction that precedes the text, and includes:
"The bad dream turned out to be one that a lot of people in the world were sharing, since it asked the same old question that we are asking ourselves fifty years later: how far can we go in the rightful defense of our Western values without abandoning them along the way?" The story unwinds with timeless achievement with each turn of the page that is a gift to the English-speaking world. Also note people wear Mackintoshes in this work...and of course Peachy suggests you wear one while reading and type on a Thinkpad.
John le Carre brings a complete humanity to the world of espionage:
"...the thing that he would have to go back and find if he ever got home to England: it was the caring about the little things-the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach, and throw it to the gulls." (p.91)
The character descriptions are extraordinary:
"He met failure as one day he would probably meet death, with cynical resentment and the courage of solitary." (p.9)
The descriptions are sensational:
"They walked to her flat through the rain and they might have been anywhere- Berlin, London, any town where paving stones turn to lakes of light in the evening rain, and the traffic shuffles despondently through wet streets." (p.30)
"In the dusk the hills were black and cavernous, the pinpoint lights struggling against the gathering darkness like the lights of distant ships at sea." (p. 147)
Besides, if you are taking the SATs anytime soon, this book alone will immensely embellish your vocabulary. It's great to read out in the sunshine of New York, or where you are.
It is summer.
It is the PERFECT time to come in from the cold.
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold has earned our Highest Recommendation.
John le Carré was born in 1931. After attending the universities of Bern and Oxford, he taught at Eton and spent five years in the British Foreign Service. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, his third book, secured him a worldwide reputation. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.
Last year, John le Carré’s A LEGACY OF SPIES was a literary sensation, landing at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and named one of the best books of 2017 by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, among others. A LEGACY OF SPIES was the first novel in over twenty-five years to feature George Smiley, le Carré’s most famous and beloved character, and, as Kirkus Reviews put it, “the miracle is that the author can revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh deception beneath it.” On May 1st, A LEGACY OF SPIES will be published in paperback by Penguin Books.
In A LEGACY OF SPIES, le Carré interweaves past with present so that each character may tell their own intense story, and 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.
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 under disturbing criteria by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications. 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.
For more than fifty years John le Carré has written novels that have come to define our age, from his extraordinary Cold War novels to his powerful depiction of the War on Terror in his novel, A Delicate Truth. He is one of only a handful of writers whose novels have been successfully adapted for the big and small screen and whose characters have been interpreted by the greatest actors of their time: in the 1960s by Richard Burton; in the 1970s by Alec Guinness; in 2005 by Ralph Fiennes; in 2014 by Philip Seymour Hoffman. In 2016, The Night Manager aired as a six-part series on AMC and became an award-winning critical hit. This fall, AMC will air the six-part TV adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl, directed by legendary filmmaker Park Chan-Wook in his television debut, which stars Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Shannon.
