A Perfect Spy
Magnus Pym, ranking diplomat, has vanished, believed defected. The chase is on: for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a secret agent. Pym's life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets.
Stats for nerds
15recommend
23mentions
19people
2016–2026years
83% recommend17% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Almost finished with A Perfect Spy. Maybe the most emotionally compelling Le Carre I’ve read. Long and I do find him a bit of a slog (The Honorable Schoolboy especially), but there’s something so fun about his brand of tactical, psychological espionage.
- I also strongly suspect you watched "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". If you enjoyed this movie and the way it is narrated, please do yourself a favor and watch all the BBC mini series from the 70ies/80ies based on John Le Carré books, namely "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "Smiley's People", and "A Perfect Spy" (or read the books, John Le Carré is an excellent writer, and "A Perfect Spy" can be compared to works by Dickens). You usually have no clue what is going on, and only learn about it later.
- If I can compare le Carre with Cormac McCarthy I would say The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is his “The Road”. Its the novel people always recommend and put on “best books” lists because its short, punchy and therefore seems like a good introduction. But both authors have a substantial body of work that much better represents them as authors since it explores the themes that really are uniquely interesting about their work. For le Carre I think the Smiley novels and a Perfect Spy and for McCarthy the plains trilogy and Blood Meridian are much more rewarding if you are willing to put in the time.
- My favorite Le Carre book is probably The Perfect Spy (especially that it is autobiographical to a great extent).
- I vastly prefer George Smiley to James Bond when it comes to spy-vs-spy fiction (though perhaps Mad Magazine's take on that genre is the best of all). Bond stories consist mostly of one-dimensional heroes and villains and their empty-headed sidekicks, predictably shoehorned into some Disney-style morality play, all designed to improve the public image of the CIA and the MI5/6 (both of whom were very upset about Le Carre's take on the Cold War, and basically seem to have promoted Fleming as an antidote).
Usually, when people these days want an unambigous good-guys-vs-bad-guys storyline, they have to go back to WWII and the almost-universally despised Nazi regime. This is because there's a lot of uncertainly about who the 'good guys' were in the Cold War, or even if there were any. The Berlin airlift looks good for the West, but the effort to perpetuate French colonialism in Vietnam, not so much. There are at least a dozen similar examples on both sides, from eastern Europe (USSR not looking so good) to Africa and South/Central America (lots of bad behavior by the 'pro-democracy West').
John Le Carre famously portrayed the conflict as two giant gear wheels grinding against each other and destroying the lives of people unfortunate enough to get caught in the middle, and his doubtful self-questioning protagonist, George Smiley, though obviously devoted to the West, carries that theme well. Le Carre's "A Perfect Spy" and "The Russia House" are also some of his best works, with similar themes and central characters.
- Can highly recommend A Perfect Spy, one of the best books I've read, a bleak masterpiece.
Related
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
4 recommend · 13
Smiley's People
3 recommend · 6
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
14 recommend · 28
The little drummer girl
9 recommend · 14
The Honourable Schoolboy
4 recommend · 7
The Night Manager
2 recommend · 6
Agent running in the field
recommend · 2
