A Legacy of Spies

A Legacy of Spies is a 2017 spy novel by John le Carré.

A Legacy of Spies
Hardback edition cover
AuthorJohn le Carré
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
PublisherViking Press
Publication date
5 September 2017
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages272
ISBN978-0735225114
Preceded byA Delicate Truth 
Followed byAgent Running in the Field 

Background

A Legacy of Spies is both a prequel and sequel to John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In that book, MI6 agent Alec Leamas, motivated by the death of his operative Karl Riemeck in East Berlin, agrees to undertake one final mission to get revenge on the man he believes to be Riemeck's murderer, a high ranking member of the Stasi named Hans-Dieter Mundt.

In the course of Leamas's mission, which finds him travelling to East Berlin, he – along with his lover, a young Communist sympathiser named Liz Gold – is shot to death at the Berlin Wall. The men responsible for dispatching Leamas – intelligence chief Control, Control's right-hand-man George Smiley, and Smiley's protégé Peter Guillam – escape unscathed.

Plot overview

Now older and living in retirement on a farm in his native Brittany, Peter Guillam – who narrates the story in the first person – is summoned to MI6 headquarters to account for his actions during Operation Windfall, the espionage mission depicted in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Learning that Leamas's now adult son, Christoph, is suing the British government for wrongful death, Guillam ruminates on the course of events that led to the death of agent Karl Riemeck, and how Guillam and Leamas worked together to try and save not only Riemeck's life but the lives of several other German citizens working with him to provide intelligence information to Britain.

The book alternates between Guillam's recollections of the events leading up to Leamas's demise and his attempts in the present day to stop feeling guilty for his role; his avoidance of Christoph, who wants to blackmail him; and his efforts to learn the whereabouts of Smiley, who has gone off the grid following his own retirement.

Background

In an interview with the National Public Radio series Fresh Air broadcast in the United States on 5 September 2017, le Carré told host Terry Gross that one of the reasons for writing the novel was "to make a case for Europe" in the wake of the 2016 British referendum, which resulted in a majority voting in favour of leaving the European Union.[1]

Critical reception

Writing in The Guardian, reviewer Robert McCrum called the novel "poignant and brilliant". Despite some misgivings, The New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner described it as "simmering".[2][3]

gollark: When have I explained nothing? I want an annotated 500-word essay with examples.
gollark: Yes, I am in fact Olivia too.
gollark: Perhaps they're semirandom. Perhaps I devise bespoke bluffs by myself and then share them. Perhaps my bluffs are optimized automatically via testing against high-fidelity computer simulations of all other participants. Perhaps I don't make bluffs but merely disseminate cognitohazards causing perception of bluffs. Perhaps my every word and bluff is meticulously generated to produce minimum guessing of me. Perhaps I never bluff and every word I say is accurate.
gollark: I generate my bluffs via RNG now to avoid the terribleness of human random number generation (heavpoot has data on this), unless I don't and am trying to trick you into not making inferences from them.
gollark: Unless I didn't but am *not* trying to fool you all.

References
  1. "Novelist John Le Carré Reflects On His Own 'Legacy' Of Spying". National Public Radio website. 28 December 2017. Retrieved 17 February 2018.
  2. Robert McCrum (10 September 2017). "A Legacy of Spies review – a final turn from Smiley's Circus?". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 February 2018.
  3. Dwight Garner (28 August 2017). "George Smiley and Other Old Friends Return in John le Carré's 'A Legacy of Spies'". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 February 2018.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.