L' onorevole scolaro

"What a man thinks is his own business. What matters is what he does." This quote seems fairly elementary in substance, and I can’t help thinking how much this seems to reflect the basic expectation of the intelligence agents in this novel. A man or woman is given a set of orders, and those orders sh Leggi tutto

John le Carré calls Hong Kong the world capital of espionage of the seventies. There on the invisible battlefields the unseen combats are being fought… But the invisibility doesn’t make the mêlées less cruel. Clandestinity just makes spy battles much more psychologically complex. A redhead, which was Leggi tutto

In the review I wrote for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy I mentioned that it took me a while to accustom myself to the spy jargon as well as many of the British idioms. It gave me a very strange feeling to start reading this episode (# 6 in the George Smiley series) and discover: (1) the British idiom Leggi tutto

This is the longest, densest, and in some ways most savage of Le Carré’s novels I’ve read, and it continues to affirm for me that he was a singular writer, even when aspects of his work feel a bit too obtuse and elusive, as some aspects do here. However, in this novel in particular, the manner in wh Leggi tutto

Σε αντίθεση με το πρώτο μέρος της τριλογίας, αυτό με κούρασε. Το τρίτο αστέρι πάει βέβαια στον Le Carre, ο οποίος δεν είναι απλώς ένας συγγραφέας noir. Είναι ένας πολύ καλός λογοτέχνης, με ωραίο λεξιλόγιο και ιδιαίτερη ικανότητα να αφηγείται. Leggi tutto