Death of the Great Spy Puppetmaster

[PeterRS]

I cannot remember when i first got hooked on the writing of John Le Carre. Probably it was with his third novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Le Carre described in such extraordinary detail the real world of spies compared to that of the glamorous vodka martini swilling seducer James Bond. I think I have read all his books since then, although one of his last A legacy of Spies remains to be opened on my Kindle. Other spy and thriller writers have published occasional best sellers that have fascinated me. Le Carre was always different. His elegant prose, the way he slowly drew you into each novel with swiftly switching locations and gradually fieshed out characters made them consistently grip me in a way no other writer in that genre has. John Le Carre was the pseudonym for David Cornwell. A very private man, he refused many honours offered by the British government, including a knighthood. Le Carre has died at the age of 89.

[reader]

 I'm reminded by Peter's post of the wondrous role that works of fiction can play in our lives, and no more so as this particular years comes to a close.

Many, I think, have one or two favorite novels we continually return to for escape or simply comfort. They transport into the lives of characters who become as real to us as those we know in our everyday lives.

It's a good time to celebrate those books--and their authors--at a moment when little in the new seems worthy of celebrating.

[vaughn]

I love a good spy novel, added to my reading list!

RIP

[reader]

If you enjoy spy novels, consider one of the oldest British entries. T.S. Elliot hailed Rudyard Kipling's Kim as his "greatest book". Set in British India at the height of the raj, an orphaned boy is recruited into what was to become the British Secret Service. Kipling follows the street-wise urchin on a journey that encompasses intrigue of all sorts. He is mentored by an Afghanistan horse dealer (working as a British intelligence agent) and a Tibetan lama, who is searching for a river of healing.  He comes to the attention of the colonel in charge of British intelligence and is sent off to the best secondary school in India for three years.  What follows is wonderful coming of age novel. Kim's parents were from northern Ireland but he identifies more as a local. The horse trader and the lama he considers his mother and father and he maintains fierce loyalty to both. Even before he finishes his schooling, his training in the intelligence arts gets underway during school breaks. Once he finishes his education, he is almost immediately drawn into the work of a spy in which he proves himself most capable. Yet throughout the novel he experiences a search for his true nature.

I continue to revisit it for the joy of Kipling's vivid prose and imagination.

[PeterRS]

I have read quite a few novels about India but strangely never 'Kim'. Now I have just started an historical book 'The Anarchy' by William Dalrymple about the relentless rise of the East india Company.

Paul Scott's 'The Raj Quartet' may have been written many decades ago but it is a stunning four book fictional account of mostly English characters who chose to live and work in India and whose lives are turned upside down by the coming of Independence. Around the 1970s it was made into a superb 8 episode tv series under the title 'The Jewel in the Crown' which is the name of the first of the novels. It featured some fine British acting talent including Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Sir Ralph Richardson, Eric Porter, Fabia Drake and Judy Parfitt. I found the DVD set in London not so long ago. 

The companion novel 'Staying On' centres on an elderly couple who decide to remain and not return to the UK. The more recent 'A Suitable Boy' by Vikram Seth is a huge novel of over 1,200 pages but wonderfully written with a panoply of great characters. Set in immediate post Independence India it focuses on a mother and her search for a boy who will be a suitable marriage partner for her daughter. It has just been made either into a movie or a tv series. I fear it can never live up to the novel. In the Washington Post, Vikram Seth was compared favourably to Tolstoy.

Of spy novels set in Asia, I still return to Graham Greene's 'The Quiet American' set in Vietnam around the time of Dien Bien Phu and the end of French involvement in that country. I find the quality of Greene's writing superb. And of course there is Le Carre's 'The Honororable Schoolboy' set in Hong Kong, the sixth novel featuring George Smiley.