Spy Who Came In From The Cold (Penguin Essentials) - Softcover

Le Carre, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241978955 ISBN 13: 9780241978955

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 2016

Synopsis

The classic Cold War thriller, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.

Alec Leamas is tired. It''s the 1960s, he''s been out in the cold for years, spying in Berlin for his British masters, and has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last - but only after one final assignment.

He must travel deep into the heart of Communist Germany and betray his country, a job that he will do with his usual cynical professionalism. But when George Smiley tries to help a young woman Leamas has befriended, Leamas''s mission may prove to be the worst thing he could ever have done.

In le Carré''s breakthrough work of 1963, the spy story is reborn as a gritty and terrible tale of men who are caught up in politics beyond their imagining.

''Superbly constructed, with an atmosphere of chilly hell'' J.B. Priestley

''The best spy story I have ever read'' Graham Greene

''The master storyteller ... has lost none of his cunning'' A. N. Wilson

''I have re-read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold over and over again since I first encountered it in my teens, just to remind myself how extraordinary a work of fiction can be'' Malcolm Gladwell

''One of those very rare novels that changes the way you look at the world. Unflinching, highly sophisticated, superb'' William Boyd

About this title

Review

It would be an international crime to reveal too much of the jeweled clockwork plot of Le Carré's first masterpiece, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. But we are at liberty to disclose that Graham Greene called it the "finest spy story ever written," and that the taut tale concerns Alec Leamas, a British agent in early Cold War Berlin. Leamas is responsible for keeping the double agents under his care undercover and alive, but East Germans start killing them, so he gets called back to London by Control, his spy master. Yet instead of giving Leamas the boot, Control gives him a scary assignment: play the part of a disgraced agent, a sodden failure everybody whispers about. Control sends him back out into the cold--deep into Communist territory to checkmate the bad-guy spies on the other side. The political chessboard is black and white, but in human terms the vicinity of the Berlin Wall is a moral no-man's land, a gray abyss patrolled by pawns.

Le Carré beats most spy writers for two reasons. First, he knows what he's talking about, since he raced around working for British Intelligence while the Wall went up. He's familiar with spycraft's fascinations, but also with the fact that it leaves ideals shaken and emotions stirred. Second, his literary tone has deep autobiographical roots. Spying is about betrayal, and Le Carré was abandoned by his mother and betrayed by his father, a notorious con man. (They figure heavily in his novels Single & Single and A Perfect Spy.) In a world of lies, Le Carré writes the bitter truth: it's every man for himself. And may the best mask win. --Tim Appelo

From the Inside Flap

"Le Carre is simply the world's greatest fictional spymaster."
NEWSWEEK
For Leamas the espionage business has become an hermetic, enclosed world, detached from outside reality. He has watched his last agent being shot, crossing from East to West Berlin, and his death marks the end of the Circus' East German network. But Control is planning an operation against the head of East German Intelligence. And Leamas is to be the instrument, set in East one last time....

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241978955
• ISBN 13: 9780241978955
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272