For the first time in over 30 years, John le Carre returns to the Cold War in this thrilling masterpiece.
John le Carre was born in 1931. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. His recent novels include A Most Wanted Man, Our Kind of Traitor and A Delicate Truth. His only work of non-fiction, The Pigeon Tunnel, was a Number One bestseller in 2016.
Vintage le Carré as he ingeniously closes the circle of his long
career ... This is an immensely clever piece of novelistic
engineering, of which its deviser can be justifiably proud. The
ingenuity and skill with which the thing is brought off is
breathtaking - really, not since The Spy Who Came in From The Cold
has le Carré exercised his gift as a storyteller so powerfully and
to such thrilling effect.
*The Guardian*
This novel offers more than one pleasure. It is not merely good in
itself - vintage John le Carré. It gives the reader, at long last,
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that have been missing for 54 years.... A
Legacy of Spies does something remarkable. Le Carré takes a le
Carré classic and thickens it into something different from what it
was....Like wine, le Carré's writing has got richer with
age...Don't wait for the paperback
*The Times*
Perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the
20th century in Britain. He will have charted our decline and
recorded the nature of our bureaucracies like no one else has. He's
in the first rank
*Ian McEwan*
le Carré's masterful new novel
*The Guardian*
It is a splendid novel...It is riveting, bitter and will be
controversial...le Carré's handling of dialogue remains perfectly
fresh. Who else can tell you so much about so many people so
quickly? Not a syllable is wasted
*The Sunday Times*
The English canon has rarely seen an acclaimed novelist and popular
entertainer sustain such a hot streak in old age....A Legacy of
Spies achieves many things. Outstandingly, it is a defiant
assertion of creative vigour...Cornwell is signing off with a
poignant and brilliant au revoir to le Carré, his alter ego, a
writer who is with the immortals
*The Observer*
A Legacy of Spies deploys a complex and ingeniously layered
structure to make the past alive in the present once more ... le
Carré has not lost his touch
*Evening Standard*
His writing is as crisp as ever ... another tale of intrigue which
will slip effortlessly into its place in the Smiley canon
*Daily Express*
A tense, intricately plotted espionage thriller . . . sheer genius
from le Carré
*Saga Magazine*
A compelling tale of Cold War duplicity and manoeuvrings in the
British secret service ... as ever much of the pleasure of reading
le Carre is that you have to be on your intellectual mettle
*New Statesman*
Part of the pleasure of this novel is that the characters seem so
much cleverer than we are ... haunting, fascinating ... it also
made me want to reread the entire Smiley sequence
*Spectator*
Le Carré is on absolutely cracking form. No writer has ever been
better at turning the act of two people talking politely to each
other across a desk into a blood sport
*The Daily Telegraph*
Le Carré has always known how to make his readers hang on
barbed-wire tenterhooks. He drip-feeds information with such
suspense-building miserliness that our befogged state matches that
of the field agents - the "joes" - who glimpse one piece of the
secret jigsaw at a time
*Financial Times*
The old magic still holds . . . I might as well say it: to read
this simmering novel is to come in from the cold
*New York Times*
What are we to make of Smiley? What is his game? Do we like him?
Admire him? Every le Carré reader has wrestled with these
questions-and A Legacy of Spies brings them to the fore more
directly than any previous book
*Vanity Fair*
Ingenious
*Washington Post*
Utterly engrossing and perfectly pitched, it is a triumph
*Daily Mail*
We are back in the more interesting territory of moral uncertainty
and failure. What, Smiley asks, was he fighting for?
*TLS*
The literary event of the Autumn
*Evening Standard*
I have re-read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold over and over
again since I first encountered it in my teens, just to remind
myself how extraordinary a work of fiction can be
*Malcolm Gladwell*
He can communicate emotion, from sweating fear to despairing love,
with terse and compassionate conviction. Above all, he can tell a
tale. Formidable equipment for a rare and disturbing writer
*Sunday Times*
He's one of those writers who will be read a century from now
*Robert Harris*
The best spy story I have ever read
*Graham Greene on The Spy Who Came In From The Cold*
A literary master for a generation
*Observer*
George Smiley is our favourite fictional spy
*Sunday Express*
le Carré has made and peopled a myth. Myths do not age
*Financial Times*
Deeply moving in its portrait of a man adrift in a climate he no
longer understands
*Metro*
[As] labyrinthine as you'd expect ... le Carré has always been a
master
*The Tablet*
Razor-sharp insight from the battle-weary Guillam and fascinating
glimpses into the murky spycraft at the height of the Cold War only
add to the joy of this sublimely accomplished thriller
*The People*
This is a truly wonderful, morally complex, politically astute
novel written with elegance and panache . . . the visceral thrill
of its twists and its complexities, its edge-of-the-seat
qualities
*Scotland on Sunday*
[Le Carré's] writing has lost none of its pith or potency . . . his
powers of invention have kept up with the pace of an ever-changing
and complex world'
*The Scotsman*
Thrilling and fascinating - a satisfying close to the saga
*The Independent*
This sublime thriller
*Sunday Mirror*
This really is vintage le Carré
*Mail on Sunday*
It's brilliantly done and very enjoyable
*Prospect*
[A] late-career triumph
*1843 Magazine*
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