John le Carr�: The Biography - Softcover

Sisman, Adam

3.95

949 ratings by Goodreads

9780307361516: John le Carr�: The Biography

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307361519 ISBN 13: 9780307361516

Publisher: Vintage Canada, 2016

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John le Carr� is still at the top more than half a century after The Spy Who Came in from the Cold became a worldwide bestseller. Written with exclusive access to le Carr�, his personal archives, and many of the people closest to him, Adam Sisman's definitive biography is a highly readable, fascinating portrait of the life, times and espionage career that inspired a literary master.
Always secretive about his background and Secret Service career (blocking one biography from publication in the 1990s, then choosing a biographer who abandoned the project), John le Carr� (David Cornwell) has finally given his blessing to Adam Sisman, who has delivered a biography that reads like a novel. From his bleak childhood--the departure of his mother when he was five was followed by "sixteen hugless years" in the dubious care of his father, a serial-seducer and con-man--through recruitment by both MI5 and MI6, his years as an agent for British Intelligence during the Cold War, to his emergence as the master of the espionage novel, le Carr� has repeatedly quarried his life for his fiction. His acute psychological renderings of undercover operations and the moral ambiguities of the Cold War and our present-day politics lend his novels a level of credibility that is unmistakable. Sisman's great biography uncovers for us the remarkable story of an enigmatic writer whose commercial success has sometimes overshadowed appreciation for his extraordinary abilities.

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From the Back Cover:

Back in 1963, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold made its pseudonymous author, John le Carr�, a worldwide publishing sensation. Since then, le Carr� has produced another twenty-one bestselling novels. A master at weaving fiction with fact, le Carr� creates complex protagonists who expose tantalizing glimpses into the author’s own character. But appearances are deceptive. The real truth is that David Cornwell, the man behind the pseudonym and one of the world’s most celebrated writers, has remained an enigma for more than half a century.

In this authoritative biography short-listed for the 2016 Pen Award, Adam Sisman explores how the central themes of Cornwell’s life defined his fiction. From his lonely, “hugless” childhood to his early recruitment by British intelligence and the evolution of his spycraft, to his fraught roles as husband and family man, Cornwell’s personal history encompasses the basic questions at the heart of his work: What does espionage mean in human terms? To what extent is betrayal acceptable in the name of love? How does a person manage the endless need for forgiveness, especially from oneself?

Written with exclusive access to David Cornwell, his private archive, and his family, friends, enemies, ex-intelligence colleagues, and ex-lovers—and featuring a wealth of previously unseen photographic material—Sisman’s biography at last brings in from the cold a man whose life has been as complex, confounding, and filled with treachery as any of his novels.

About the Author:

ADAM SISMAN has written four previous biographies, including An Honourable Englishman: The Life of Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge and Boswell's Presumptuous Task, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and received a National Books Critics Circle Award in 1999.

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