In Silverview John le Carré turns his focus to the world that occupied his writing for the past sixty years - the secret world itself.
Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the City for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career,Julian's evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward,a Polish émigré living in Silverview,the big house on the edge of town,seems to know a lot about Julian's family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise.When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak,the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea...
Silverview is the mesmerising story of an encounter between innocence and experience and between public duty and private morals. In his inimitable voice John le Carré,the greatest chronicler of our age,seeks to answer the question of what we truly owe to the people we love.
Publisher: Penguin Books LtdISBN: 9780241994535Number of pages: 272Weight: 240 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 20 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Le Carre at his finest,revealing character and backstory through dialogue with an economy and grace beyond most writers...le Carre's greatness has its roots in his mastery of spy fiction; a genre he augmented with novels notable for their craftsmanship and humanity,and writing for its stealth and sophistication. With the publication of Silverview,it's clear these virtues remained intact to the end.'- Mick Herron,Guardian
'Thematically,this is classic le Carre: an exploration of how people do the wrong thing for the right motive. The prose is as unshowily superb as ever'- Sunday Telegraph
'His publisher is promoting it as a great literary event - the final book by one of postwar Britain's finest writers. That seems fair enough to me...(Silverview has) enough reminders of the old magic to please his most ardent aficionados'- Dominic Sandbrook,Sunday Times
'A fitting coda to the work of our greatest spy novelist'- John Williams, Mail on Sunday
'Textbook le Carre and a pleasing coda to a brilliant career: a short,sharp study of the human cost of espionage'-Daily Telegraph
'The first page hooks you in...John le Carre has lost none of his power to draw the reader straight into his world'- The Times
'A lyrical,poignant portrait of betrayal in a family that lives in a world submerged in subterfuge,and resonates with le Carre's exquisite genius. It is to be savoured gently rather than devoured'-Daily Mail
'There is a retro charm about proceedings...as well as a welcome array of familiar le Carre tropes,from sharply drawn characters to stimulating interviews and debriefings,plus a compelling denouement involving a wanted man on the run...a worthy coda,a commanding farewell from a much-missed master'- Economist
'Arguably the greatest English novelist of his generation'-Guardian
'Crisp prose,a precision-tooled plot,the heady sense of an inside track on a shadowy world...all his usual pleasures are here'- Observer
'Le Carre's ability to inhabit the deepest recesses of his characters'lives is once again on sparkling display...It leaves no doubt that le Carre believed good literature could help make the world a better place. His own contribution to that edifice was by no means negligible'- FT
'A diverting if slender coda to one of the boldest writing careers of the 20th century...In this posthumous farewell,le Carre is still showing us how literary fiction and the spy narrative can coexist in the same book'- i
'Packed with cherishable details and intriguingly ambivalent about the role of the Secret Intelligence Service,John le Carre's last novel brings his career to a close in fine style'- Scotsman
'It has often been said that le Carre is a novelist,not a mere thriller writer. Yet the thing is that,for all his protests that his creations were always more fictional than credited,what he excels at is giving us a plausible peek into the spy's world'-The Times
'It is written with elegance and often pungency,the pitch-perfect dialogue ranging from the waggishly epigrammatic to the bluntly outraged'-New York Times
John le Carré
One of the greatest spy novelists of all time,John le Carré was born in 1931. 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 all featuring his most famous character,George Smiley,the quintessential Cold War operative. An antidote to Fleming's racier James Bond,Smiley is cool,thoughtful,somewhat academic and (superficially) "breathtakingly normal"with a somewhat ambivalent attitude to the Service and its efficacy. His other novels,thrillers which range widely covering variously political issues of the arms trade,modern conflict and drug-trafficking,include: A Most Wanted Man,Our Kind of Traitor,A Delicate Truth and the recently adapted The Night Manager. His only work of non-fiction,The Pigeon Tunnel,was a Number One bestseller in 2016.
Visit the John le Carré author page
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