This is a war... It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale,at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes,I admit. But it's nothing,nothing at all beside other wars - the last or the next."
Alex Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s,he's been out in the cold for years,spying in the shadow of the Berlin Wall for his British masters. He 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.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is one of the most popular and influential spy novels in literary history,and its success upon publication in 1963 earned John Le Carré acclaim rivalled only by Ian Fleming.
'He can communicate emotion,from sweating fear to despairing love,with terse and compassionate conviction. Above all,he can tell a tale.'Sunday Times
Publisher: Penguin Books LtdISBN: 9780141194523Number of pages: 304Weight: 224 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 17 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Superbly constructed,with an atmosphere of chilly hellThe best spy story I have ever readThe master storyteller...has lost none of his cunningI 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.One of those very rare novels that changes the way you look at the world. Unflinching,highly sophisticated,superb.
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 pageWilliam Boyd
Throughout a glittering career,William Boyd has covered everything from colonial farce to primate research in a series of beautifully-rendered novels. His 1991 debut A Good Man in Africa immediately bagged the Whitbread First Novel Award,a win that has heralded contemporary classics such as the Costa-winning Restless and the literary tour de force that is Any Human Heart.
Visit the William Boyd author page
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