A Most Wanted Man
John le Carre, 2008
Simon & Schuster
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476740140
Summary
New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love or pity and remain good "patriots"—this is the fabric of John le Carre's fiercely compelling novel, A Most Wanted Man.
A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.
Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client's survival becomes more important to her than her own career—or safety. In pursuit of Issa's mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg.
Annabel, Issa and Brue form an unlikely alliance—and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the "War on Terror," the rival spies of Germany, England and America converge upon the innocents.
Thrilling, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times. (From the publisher.)
See the 2015 movie with Philip Seymour Hoffman (his last film).
Listen to the Screen Thoughts podcast as Hollister and O'Toole compare book and film.
Author Bio
• Aka—David John More Conwell
• Birth—October 19, 1931
• Where—Poole, Dorsetshire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Awards—Dagger Award, British Crime Writers' Association;
Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in Cornwall and Hampstead, England
To categorize John le Carre as a writer of espionage thrillers is not so much inaccurate as it is restrictive. Certainly, his spy novels are the gold standard against which all others are compared, but he writes with such literary elegance and philosophical complexity that his readership extends far beyond genre fans.
What we know of this famously taciturn author's life comes from official records (date of birth, education, marriages, etc.) and whatever biographical tidbits he has seen fit to divulge. He was born David John Moore Cornwell in England in 1931. His mother deserted the family early on, and his father (a charming con artist) floated in and out of jail. Cornwell attended the universities of Berne and Oxford, taught school for a while, then joined the British Foreign Service in 1959 at the height of the Cold War. From there, he was recruited into M16, the UK's secret service. (On his website, he self-effacingly claims to have "spent a few ineffectual but extremely formative years in British Intelligence.")
Although his spying career ended abruptly when British double agent Kim Philby blew his cover to the KGB, Cornwell was still working for M16 when he began writing novels. He adopted the nom de plume John le Carre for his first book, 1961's Call for the Dead, whose memorable first chapter introduced British intelligence officer George Smiley. Quiet, mild-mannered, and morally complex, Smiley offered a stark contrast to James Bond, the glamorous jet-setting spy of Ian Fleming's popular pulp novels. He would also turn out to be the most famous of le Carre's fictional creations.
Le Carre's debut was well received, but it was his third novel, 1963's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, that proved to be his breakthrough book. This suspense classic recounts the harrowing story of a burnt-out operative, desperate to retire, who is given one last, perilous assignment. Embodying le Carre's cynical, morally ambiguous view of Cold War espionage, the novel won rapturous reviews (Graham Greene called it "The best spy story I have ever read."), received a Gold Dagger and an Edgar Award, and was turned into an award-winning motion picture starring Richard Burton.
The Cold War may have ended, but its demise has done nothing to diminish the power of Le Carre's novels. He continues to craft thrillers filled with intrigue, if not espionage; and his books continue to deeply satisfy readers around the world.
Extras
• Le Carre's sister is British actress Charlotte Cornwell, who describes him as "the best brother ever."
• The author's most autobiographical novel is 1986's A Perfect Spy, dealing with his tangled relationship with his mostly absent father.
• In September of 2008, an interview appeared in the Sunday Times in which le Carre was [mis]quoted as saying that he had considered defecting to the Russians during his stint with M16. In fact, in his conversation with the interviewer, he had admitted to nothing more than curiosity about life on the other side of the Iron Curtain. "I wasn't tempted ideologically," he says. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
In A Most Wanted Man, the sheer desperation of those whose job it is to prevent another 9/11, another Madrid commuter train, another London Tube attack, is written as a slow-burning fire in every line, and that's what makes it nearly impossible to mark the page and go to sleep. Something said earlier in this review might better be amended. The concept of "best book" is difficult for the writer and reader; there are too many variables. Truer to say that this is le Carre's strongest, most powerful novel, which has a great deal to do with its near perfect narrative pace and the pleasure of its prose, but even more to do with the emotions of its audience, what the reader brings to the book. There the television has once again done its work, has created a reality, and John le Carre has written an extraordinary novel of that reality.
Alan Furst - New York Times Book Review
Le Carre's...secret agents exist in a world of stalemate, moral compromise, ambiguity and betrayal.... Like his books, le Carre is a mix of unblinking realism and hopeful humanism.
Jill Lawless - Associated Press
Intricately plotted, beautifully written, propulsive, morally engaged, but timely as today's headlines.... The protagonists are brilliantly drawn.
Tim Rutten - Los Angeles Times
When boxer Melik Oktay and his mother, both Turkish Muslims living in Hamburg, take in a street person calling himself Issa at the start of this morally complex thriller from le Carre (The Mission Song), they set off a chain of events implicating intelligence agencies from three countries. Issa, who claims to be a Muslim medical student, is, in fact, a wanted terrorist and the son of Grigori Karpov, a Red Army colonel whose considerable assets are concealed in a mysterious portfolio at a Hamburg bank. Tommy Brue, a stereotypical flawed everyman caught up in the machinations of spies and counterspies, enters the plot when Issa's attorney seeks to claim these assets. The book works best in its depiction of the rivalries besetting even post-9/11 intelligence agencies that should be allies, but none of the characters is as memorable as George Smiley or Magnus Pym. Still, even a lesser le Carre effort is far above the common run of thrillers.
Publishers Weekly
When private British bankers Brue Freres took on some unusual clients at the time of the former Soviet Union's collapse, the prospect of terrorist ties or involvement in state security organs was but a dim shadow on the horizon. Now, though, a young and curiously charming Chechen with the marks of torture on his body has arrived as a stowaway in Hamburg and bearing the key to a Brue lockbox. Sheltered by Annabel, a fiery German human rights attorney, the Chechen needs a safe berth. Relying on assumptions of fair dealing, Annabel and Tommy Brue craft a wily deal that protects the refugee and releases the funds. British and German agents act as guarantors of the deal, but no one anticipates the CIA's crashing the party. In le Carre's inimitable way, the individual's striving to do the right thing offers an eloquent but feathery counterweight to the relentless pressure of the "espiocrats," the author's neologism for the new spies operating within the the ethics of expedience. The old spy master hasn't lost his touch. Every public library should order multiple reserve copies. Highly recommended.
Barbara Conaty - Library Journal
Government knaves and compromised idealists duel over the fate of an alleged terrorist in le Carre's latest examination of The Way We Spy Now. A gaunt stranger in a long black overcoat materializes one night near the docks of Hamburg. Calling himself Issa, speaking only Russian, identifying himself as a Chechen Muslim, he attaches himself to Turkish heavyweight champion Melik Oktay, who gives him shelter, and Annabel Richter, the Sanctuary International lawyer who begins the long fight to normalize his position in Germany. The case for deporting Issa is strong. He'd been imprisoned in his homeland, then again in Sweden, where he'd been smuggled before escaping to Hamburg. But Issa holds one trump card. His father, Col. Grigori Borisovich Karpov, was one of a handful of Russian gangsters who opened a Lipizzaner account at the private banking firm of Brue Freres years ago. If Issa claimed the funds due his father, he'd be a rich man. Despite the urging of Annabel and Tommy Brue, the guilt-ridden heir of Brue Freres, Issa doesn't want the money; he only wants to be granted asylum and study medicine. Or is he, as the intelligence agencies of Germany and Britain contend, a jihadist who's arrived in Hamburg to work some frightful act of terror? As Annabel labors to keep Issa hidden from the authorities until she's secured his legal status and Brue struggles to reconcile his commission from his father's criminal clients with the safety of his bank and himself, Gunther Bachmann, of Germany's domestic intelligence service, warily tracks the new arrival, only to find himself under pressure from a pair of clownish but menacing British agents whose deep-laid plans have roots a generation deep. The story can't possibly end well, and it doesn't. But le Carre, without lecturing, deftly puts human faces and human costs on the paranoid response to the threat of terrorism.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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