Lo specchio delle spie

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was praised for its harsh realism, but le Carre believed it was not harsh or realistic enough. On the contrary, he considered it unrealistic and romantic, what with its nearly omniscient intelligence agency, the agency's extraordinarily complex yet flawless plan, an Leggi tutto

Have you ever wanted to be a spy? I didn’t – not until I started reading John Le Carré’s George Smiley series this year. I do remember when us four siblings played “spy” along with other games all over the acres of our farm and buildings, but I was a bit of a failure back then. I wanted to have ever Leggi tutto

***I know I shouldn’t have been shocked that John Le Carre passed away at the age of eighty-nine, but he has been so steadily prolific that I just thought he’d keep giving us a new novel every year until long after he reached the centennial mark. My cultural heroes have been passing away at an alarm Leggi tutto

This is a dark and cynical and ultimately very sorrowful novel. Not as compact and airtight as his masterpiece The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, it nonetheless paints a mesmerizing and upsetting portrait of the flawed bureaucratic men who work for the UK intelligence agency, and the complicated, te Leggi tutto

‘Nobody wins this one, do they?’ Seedy and sad. Remembered the film from the opening and from the final part. But memory escaped for the middle. Story of infighting between MI6 the Circus and a smaller department trying to substantiate possible missile sitings in East German. George Smiley appears br Leggi tutto

There is a valuable lesson in this book: when an author uses a novel’s introduction to suggest it may be his worst, believe him. Of the four books I’ve written by John le Carré, The Looking Glass War is clearly the worst. le Carré seems to have issues carrying his stories when the plot is not singul Leggi tutto