John le Carré was born in 1931 and attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. He taught at Eton and served briefly in British intelligence during the Cold War. For the last fifty years he has lived by his pen. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.
“[Le Carré's] novels are so brilliant because they’re emotionally
and psychologically absolutely true, but of course they’re novels.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Le Carré’s prose remains brisk and lapidary. His wit is intact and
rolls as if on casters... I might as well say it: to read this
simmering novel is to come in from the cold.” —New York
Times
“Le Carré is such a gifted storyteller that he interlaces the cards
in his deck so they fit not simply with this book, but with the
earlier ones as well.” —The Atlantic
"A kind of eulogy for the present as well as the past, A Legacy of
Spies is haunting." —Chicago Tribune
"Swift and satisfying." —USA Today
“We wish for more complexity and logic in our politics, so we look
to make political art that is logical and complex: a genre defined
by John le Carré.” —New Republic
“The spy master’s latest Smiley novel entwines today’s world with a
lost one... Ingenious."
—Washington Post
"Intricately plotted and richly satisfying." —Star Tribune
"Gripping."—The Christian Science Monitor
"[Le Carré] can convey a character in a sentence, land an emotional
insight in [a] phrase & demolish an ideology in a
paragraph." —Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Any reader who knows le Carré's earlier work, and quite a few who
don't, will assume that any attempt to second-guess the mandarins
of the Service will backfire. The miracle is that the author can
revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh
deception beneath it.”
—Kirkus
Praise for John le Carré
“One of our great writers of moral ambiguity, a tireless explorer
of that darkly contradictory no-man’s land.”
—Los Angeles Times
“No other writer has charted—pitilessly for politicians but
thrillingly for readers—the public and secret histories of his
times.”
—The Guardian (UK)
“I would suggest immortality for John le Carré, who I believe one
of the most intelligent and entertaining writers working
today.”
—Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
“The constant flow of emotion lifts le Carré not only above all
modern suspense novelists, but above most novelists now
practicing.”
—Financial Times
“A writer of towering gifts.”
—The Independent (UK)
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