A Perfect Spy

The best English novel since the war Philip RothMagnus Pym - ranking diplomat consummate Englishman loving husband secret agent - has vanished. Has he defected? Gone to ground? As the hunt for Pym intensifies the secrets of his life are revealed: the people he has loved and betrayed the unreliable con-man father who made him the two mentors who moulded and shaped him and now wish to claim this perfect spy as their own. Described by le Carré as his most autobiographical novel A Perfect Spy is a devastating portrayal of a man who has played different roles for so long he no longer knows who he is. Le Carré understood that espionage is an extreme version of the human comedy even the human tragedy. A Perfect Spy will very likely remain his greatest book New Yorker About the Author John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6). He published his debut novelCall for the Dead in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novelThe Spy Who Came in from the Cold secured him a worldwide reputation which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogyTinker Tailor Soldier SpyThe Honourable Schoolboy andSmileys People. At the end of the Cold War le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoirThe Pigeon Tunnel was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novelA Legacy of Spies appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020. His posthumous novelSilverview was published in 2021.