A naive British academic encounters a Russian oligarch in the Caribbean and the spider's web of global espionage unwinds in waves around them. The ambiguities of the secret world brought up to date. Le Carre at his best.
Author shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2011.
The Lovereading view...
This is Le Carre at his spellbinding best. His characters are so richly sketched and brilliantly imagined and there is no one to beat him for the quality of his dialogue which just slips off the tongue and into one’s subconscious but in such a way that it will never be forgotten. Le Carre has proven here that he’s not just the King of the Cold War but also of the modern, murky and sometimes rather nasty world in which we now live.
Britain is in the depths of recession. A left-leaning young Oxford academic and his barrister girlfriend take an off-peak holiday on the Caribbean island of Antigua. By seeming chance they bump into a Russian millionaire called Dima who owns a peninsula and a diamond-encrusted gold watch. He also has a tattoo on his right thumb, and wants a game of tennis. What else he wants propels the young lovers on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps, to the murkiest cloisters of the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain's Intelligence Establishment.
John le Carré was born in 1931 and attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. He taught at Eton and served briefly in British Intelligence during the Cold War. For the last fifty years he has lived by his pen. He divides his time between London and Cornwall. His works include The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Smiley's People; The Little Drummer Girl; A Perfect Spy; The Russia House; and Absolute Friends.
