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Chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews
In this exquisitely told novel, John le Carré shows us once again his acute understanding of the world we live in and where power really lies.
In the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and with Britain on the brink of economic ruin, a young English couple takes a vacation in Antigua. There they meet Dima, a Russian who styles himself the world’s Number One money-launderer and who wants, among other things, a game of tennis. Back in London, the couple is subjected to an interrogation by the British Secret service who also need their help. Their acquiescence will lead them on a precarious journey through Paris to a safe house in Switzerland, helpless pawns in a game of nations that reveals the unholy alliances between the Russian mafia, the City of London, the government and the competing factions of the British Secret Service.
In this exquisitely told novel, John le Carré shows us once again his acute understanding of the world we live in and where power really lies.
In the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and with Britain on the brink of economic ruin, a young English couple takes a vacation in Antigua. There they meet Dima, a Russian who styles himself the world’s Number One money-launderer and who wants, among other things, a game of tennis. Back in London, the couple is subjected to an interrogation by the British Secret service who also need their help. Their acquiescence will lead them on a precarious journey through Paris to a safe house in Switzerland, helpless pawns in a game of nations that reveals the unholy alliances between the Russian mafia, the City of London, the government and the competing factions of the British Secret Service.
450 pages, Pocket Book
First published October 12, 2010
1166 people are currently reading
6025 people want to read
About the author
John Le Carré
364 books9,396 followersJohn le Carré, the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England), was an English author of espionage novels. Le Carré had resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, Great Britain, for more than 40 years, where he owned a mile of cliff close to Land's End.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,473 reviews
April 4, 2020
”Dima mightn’t exactly have been spoiled for choice when it came to selecting a messenger, confessor, or prisoner’s friend, or whatever it was that Perry has been appointed, or had appointed himself. She’d always known there was a slumbering romantic in him waiting to be woken when selfless dedication was on offer, and if there was a whiff of danger in the air, so much the better.”
When people are in desperate straits and in need of help from a stranger, they scan the faces around them for something in their features to reassure them, intuitively, that this person is the one most likely to render aid. In the case of Dima, the face he decides to entrust his life belongs to Peregrine Makepiece. Perry, an Oxford academic, and his barrister wife, Gail, are on vacation in Antigua. They are there during the off season to keep the cost of the trip within the means of their cash-strapped budget. Dima is a force of nature, a whirling dervish of expansive energy, and surrounded by an entourage of family, friends, and bulky men with heavy hands and dead eyes.
Dima challenges Perry to a tennis match, but this game isn’t about footfalls and line calls. Oh no, it is a much more dangerous sport of international intrigue. Dima has found by complete chance the perfect man to shoulder the burden of his problems. He is a money launderer not only for the Russian mafia but, as it turns out, a bag man for high ranking British politicians. Lots of dirty Russian money is about to be moved through British banks, and Dima knows the players, the method, and the origin of the money. He has suddenly become a huge liability to powerful men in Russia and Great Britain, who simply have too much to lose to take a chance on being exposed. Perry is left-leaning, suspicious of his government, but still patriotic. A man who has waited his whole life to step into the subterfuge of a Graham Greene novel. Dima needs him to help him broker a deal with MI6, and something in Perry’s romantic soul lights up like the London Eye.
Perry knows a guy who knows a guy, and the flash drive that Dima palms off to him to tempt MI6 makes its way through the labyrinth of offices until it lands on the desk of someone who finds Dima’s information intriguing enough to pursue.
Perry thinks he’s done his bit. ”That’s it. You’re on your own. I am, therefore I don’t spy.”
He is wrong.
Dima insists that Perry must stay involved. In a business rife with lies, double crosses, and deceptions, Dima can’t and shouldn’t trust the spies at MI6. Dima’s primary concern is the safety of his family, but to MI6 that is definitely a secondary concern. Perry and Gail both find themselves in over their heads, but they also find themselves caring about the fate of Dima and his family, and their faith in their own government will be sorely tested in the process.
One thing I really enjoyed about this story was the way Perry and Gail pooled their intelligence, keeping each other informed, and both contributed fairly equally to the process. I think there are too few examples in literature of couples being real partners in life. This is not a top tier Le Carre, but the chances of him writing a masterpiece that would rival his early work is improbable. Regardless, he is still writing spy thrillers that are better than 90% of his supposed competition. The negative reviews I’ve seen of his later work are frankly doing him a disservice and not giving him enough credit for writing intelligent but maybe breezier books than what he did earlier in his career.
The 2016 Ewan McGregor movie has the same basic plot as the book. There are some annoying changes. They move the setting from Antigua to Morocco, which is okay. They make Perry a lousy tennis player, where in the book he is a really good tennis player. I actually like that aspect of his character. It makes the whole tennis match between him and Dima much more intriguing in the book. Most of the changes are irritating to this John Le Carre fan, but do not hamper my overall enjoyment of the movie. I would definitely recommend reading the book before watching the movie. Le Carre still has a deft hand with prose and building intrigue that movies struggle to replicate.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/
When people are in desperate straits and in need of help from a stranger, they scan the faces around them for something in their features to reassure them, intuitively, that this person is the one most likely to render aid. In the case of Dima, the face he decides to entrust his life belongs to Peregrine Makepiece. Perry, an Oxford academic, and his barrister wife, Gail, are on vacation in Antigua. They are there during the off season to keep the cost of the trip within the means of their cash-strapped budget. Dima is a force of nature, a whirling dervish of expansive energy, and surrounded by an entourage of family, friends, and bulky men with heavy hands and dead eyes.
Dima challenges Perry to a tennis match, but this game isn’t about footfalls and line calls. Oh no, it is a much more dangerous sport of international intrigue. Dima has found by complete chance the perfect man to shoulder the burden of his problems. He is a money launderer not only for the Russian mafia but, as it turns out, a bag man for high ranking British politicians. Lots of dirty Russian money is about to be moved through British banks, and Dima knows the players, the method, and the origin of the money. He has suddenly become a huge liability to powerful men in Russia and Great Britain, who simply have too much to lose to take a chance on being exposed. Perry is left-leaning, suspicious of his government, but still patriotic. A man who has waited his whole life to step into the subterfuge of a Graham Greene novel. Dima needs him to help him broker a deal with MI6, and something in Perry’s romantic soul lights up like the London Eye.
Perry knows a guy who knows a guy, and the flash drive that Dima palms off to him to tempt MI6 makes its way through the labyrinth of offices until it lands on the desk of someone who finds Dima’s information intriguing enough to pursue.
Perry thinks he’s done his bit. ”That’s it. You’re on your own. I am, therefore I don’t spy.”
He is wrong.
Dima insists that Perry must stay involved. In a business rife with lies, double crosses, and deceptions, Dima can’t and shouldn’t trust the spies at MI6. Dima’s primary concern is the safety of his family, but to MI6 that is definitely a secondary concern. Perry and Gail both find themselves in over their heads, but they also find themselves caring about the fate of Dima and his family, and their faith in their own government will be sorely tested in the process.
One thing I really enjoyed about this story was the way Perry and Gail pooled their intelligence, keeping each other informed, and both contributed fairly equally to the process. I think there are too few examples in literature of couples being real partners in life. This is not a top tier Le Carre, but the chances of him writing a masterpiece that would rival his early work is improbable. Regardless, he is still writing spy thrillers that are better than 90% of his supposed competition. The negative reviews I’ve seen of his later work are frankly doing him a disservice and not giving him enough credit for writing intelligent but maybe breezier books than what he did earlier in his career.
The 2016 Ewan McGregor movie has the same basic plot as the book. There are some annoying changes. They move the setting from Antigua to Morocco, which is okay. They make Perry a lousy tennis player, where in the book he is a really good tennis player. I actually like that aspect of his character. It makes the whole tennis match between him and Dima much more intriguing in the book. Most of the changes are irritating to this John Le Carre fan, but do not hamper my overall enjoyment of the movie. I would definitely recommend reading the book before watching the movie. Le Carre still has a deft hand with prose and building intrigue that movies struggle to replicate.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/
May 8, 2022
In Our kind of Traitor we meet two Perry and Gayle, who take off a vacation on a Caribbean island where they bump into Dima a Russian money launder for the Russian mafia who wants asylum for him and his family in return he will hand over evidence incriminating his co-conspirators in the black operation and the Britsh parliament. This was a really good audio book and was happy that John Le Carre narrated it
August 28, 2010
Perry and Gail, a 20-something professional couple, are vacationing in Antigua when they are forcefully befriended by a money-laundering Russian mobster, Dima, and his extended entourage. Dima wants asylum in Britain for himself and his family in exchange for evidence incriminating his co-conspirators in European high society and the British parliament. Perry and Gail take their story to the British Secret Service, who improbably put them to work getting the issue resolved.
The problem with the novel isn't spy clichés. (If you read genre fiction, you are well acquainted with the clichés and have made your peace with them. They do not hamper your reading, most of the time.) The problem isn't staleness. The problem is badness. This just isn't a well-written novel. It is profoundly boring. There is very little actual action; much of it is taken up with Perry and Gail recounting to the Brits what Dima has told them, and then the Brits listening to Dima's audiotapes and watching secret videotapes. This is followed by a long section involving internecine power struggles in the spy management apparatus over how to deal with Dima. Everything seems to be at a remove from any action, until a scene at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris, where Gail, Perry, Dima, and Dima's criminal posse and associates all watch Roger Federer duke it out with Robin Soderling for the 2009 French Open championship. Even this scene is quite boring. What tension there is is limited to about the last 10 pages, and a dramatic ending.
I was mystified by the constant switching between past and present tense, sometimes even within paragraphs. Overall, the book had a lazy, phoned-in feel.
The problem with the novel isn't spy clichés. (If you read genre fiction, you are well acquainted with the clichés and have made your peace with them. They do not hamper your reading, most of the time.) The problem isn't staleness. The problem is badness. This just isn't a well-written novel. It is profoundly boring. There is very little actual action; much of it is taken up with Perry and Gail recounting to the Brits what Dima has told them, and then the Brits listening to Dima's audiotapes and watching secret videotapes. This is followed by a long section involving internecine power struggles in the spy management apparatus over how to deal with Dima. Everything seems to be at a remove from any action, until a scene at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris, where Gail, Perry, Dima, and Dima's criminal posse and associates all watch Roger Federer duke it out with Robin Soderling for the 2009 French Open championship. Even this scene is quite boring. What tension there is is limited to about the last 10 pages, and a dramatic ending.
I was mystified by the constant switching between past and present tense, sometimes even within paragraphs. Overall, the book had a lazy, phoned-in feel.
May 26, 2016
“It struck him as a bit unfair that, at the age of eight, he should have manifested the same sense of solitude that haunted him at forty-three.”
― John le Carré, Our Kind of Traitor
Maybe 3.5 stars. I liked it more than I was prepared to. Reminded me in a lot of ways of Single & Single. It was a tight morality tale in a world lacking morality. Like most of le Carré's post-Soviet/post-Cold War spy novels the real play here is not East v West, THAT is just a side show, the real conflict is ALL internal. William Faulkner's famous quote from his Nobel Prize speech that "the human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about, regardless of the genre" seems to perfectly capture le Carré. But le Carré doesn't just use that idea with people, he uses that idea with institutions (Secret Intelligence Service), and with whole countries.
The modern world is a world in conflict with itself. God is dead. But maybe, just maybe, He still listens to all your phone calls, still reads all your text messages, and despite all the past promises made -- He might just decide to screw you in the end.
― John le Carré, Our Kind of Traitor
Maybe 3.5 stars. I liked it more than I was prepared to. Reminded me in a lot of ways of Single & Single. It was a tight morality tale in a world lacking morality. Like most of le Carré's post-Soviet/post-Cold War spy novels the real play here is not East v West, THAT is just a side show, the real conflict is ALL internal. William Faulkner's famous quote from his Nobel Prize speech that "the human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about, regardless of the genre" seems to perfectly capture le Carré. But le Carré doesn't just use that idea with people, he uses that idea with institutions (Secret Intelligence Service), and with whole countries.
The modern world is a world in conflict with itself. God is dead. But maybe, just maybe, He still listens to all your phone calls, still reads all your text messages, and despite all the past promises made -- He might just decide to screw you in the end.
July 25, 2011
Well this doesn’t just seem to be ‘The Worst Novel Le Carré Has Ever Written’, it actually jumps up and down and demands the title.
It’s odd that an author who has spent half a century writing suspenseful and intelligent thrillers, should now produce one so lacking in suspense or interest. Certainly it seems unusual that when the author returns to what once was his pet subject – machinations concerning Russia – he should create a work so lacking in insight or depth. But more than that, it’s baffling that Le Carré can suddenly have forgotten everything he ever knew about dramatic momentum and hooking a reader’s interest.
Maybe part of the problem is the author’s age (he does turn eighty this year, after all), as he never really seems to grasp the young twenty-something London couple at the centre of ‘Our Kind of Traitor’. It’s possible that the generation gap is now so large that he finds it difficult to get into the mindset of people of that age group. But then the other characters in this book – be they spooks or villains (types Le Carré has proved repeatedly that he knows), also struggle to appear in anything more than two dimensions.
It’s not a totally terrible novel, as Le Carré cannot make it through a book without producing the occasional good scene or confrontation, but it is a trudge to get to those good parts. And I’m very much left wondering, how the man who wrote ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’, or ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’, has now managed to write such a poor spooks versus Russians yarn?
It’s odd that an author who has spent half a century writing suspenseful and intelligent thrillers, should now produce one so lacking in suspense or interest. Certainly it seems unusual that when the author returns to what once was his pet subject – machinations concerning Russia – he should create a work so lacking in insight or depth. But more than that, it’s baffling that Le Carré can suddenly have forgotten everything he ever knew about dramatic momentum and hooking a reader’s interest.
Maybe part of the problem is the author’s age (he does turn eighty this year, after all), as he never really seems to grasp the young twenty-something London couple at the centre of ‘Our Kind of Traitor’. It’s possible that the generation gap is now so large that he finds it difficult to get into the mindset of people of that age group. But then the other characters in this book – be they spooks or villains (types Le Carré has proved repeatedly that he knows), also struggle to appear in anything more than two dimensions.
It’s not a totally terrible novel, as Le Carré cannot make it through a book without producing the occasional good scene or confrontation, but it is a trudge to get to those good parts. And I’m very much left wondering, how the man who wrote ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’, or ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’, has now managed to write such a poor spooks versus Russians yarn?
August 25, 2020
Le Carre enters the world of the Russian mafia and global money laundering in this tense, perfectly paced page turner. The premise is stretching credibility a bit far with a young English couple on holiday in Antigua, Perry and Gail, befriended by a Russian, Dina, seeking asylum in Britain in exchange for inside information into black financial operations and the involvement of key members of the British establishment. The result is an unlikely, unauthorised deployment of Perry and Gail to bring the Russian in, with the help of co-opted members of the ‘Service’. This takes us to Paris for the 2009 French Open final between Federer and Soderberg and then to Switzerland.
Although there were several possibilities, I didn’t foresee how all this skulduggery would end and I was captivated until the final sentence. So why not 5 stars? I’ve complained before about the recurring character in Le Carre’s books - the middle-aged, disaffected spy with a messed up private life. I thought we were avoiding him this time but he still appears, in a slightly younger version than usual, in Luke. Is MI6 full of these men or is it a character Le Carre relates to so much that he keeps reintroducing him? I hope it’s the latter! A strong 4 stars. He’s still the master spy novelist in my opinion.
Although there were several possibilities, I didn’t foresee how all this skulduggery would end and I was captivated until the final sentence. So why not 5 stars? I’ve complained before about the recurring character in Le Carre’s books - the middle-aged, disaffected spy with a messed up private life. I thought we were avoiding him this time but he still appears, in a slightly younger version than usual, in Luke. Is MI6 full of these men or is it a character Le Carre relates to so much that he keeps reintroducing him? I hope it’s the latter! A strong 4 stars. He’s still the master spy novelist in my opinion.
March 13, 2011
This novel marks a return of sorts for le Carré. Firstly, it's a return to the topic of Russia, something that has been absent from the last few books he has written. It's also a return to his highly-stylized narrative, his great dialog, and decent characterization, all of which were absent from his previous novel, "A Most Wanted Man". However, what remains is still what I call an 'activist novel', which is pretty much what le Carré's last five novels have all been about. But this time it has been muted a bit and the plot takes a more predominant role.
Le Carré gets a lot of things right in this novel, and I think many long-time fans will be pleased. There were, however, two items that disappointed me. One involved a subplot regarding the money launderer's daughter, which could easily have been edited out. The other is that le Carré has pretty much ended his last five novels the same way. I think it's high time for him to give us something a little different as it's getting a little predictable now.
I say give this one a try. It's good, and you won't be disappointed. Really, I can't say enough about the narrative and dialog. It's worth the read for that alone. It's also interesting to read a few of the newspaper articles that are being mentioned with reference to this novel just to see how close to reality le Carré really is with this plot.
Le Carré gets a lot of things right in this novel, and I think many long-time fans will be pleased. There were, however, two items that disappointed me. One involved a subplot regarding the money launderer's daughter, which could easily have been edited out. The other is that le Carré has pretty much ended his last five novels the same way. I think it's high time for him to give us something a little different as it's getting a little predictable now.
I say give this one a try. It's good, and you won't be disappointed. Really, I can't say enough about the narrative and dialog. It's worth the read for that alone. It's also interesting to read a few of the newspaper articles that are being mentioned with reference to this novel just to see how close to reality le Carré really is with this plot.
December 7, 2020
Another wonderful book by John Le Carre. Easy to read and somehow you become invested in all the characters. Throughout I was wondering who the traitor was going to be on the British side amongst the characters I was introduced to. The only part I didn't like was the ending - it's been done before I'm sure, so I was hoping for something different from the author.
May 27, 2017
description: Perry and Gail are idealistic and very much in love when they splurge on a tennis vacation at a posh beach resort in Antigua. But the charm begins to pall when a big-time Russian money launderer enlists their help to defect. In exchange for amnesty, Dima is ready to rat out his vory (Russian criminal brotherhood) compatriots and expose corruption throughout the so-called legitimate financial and political worlds. Soon, the guileless couple find themselves pawns in a deadly endgame whose outcome will be determined by the victor of the British Secret Service's ruthless internecine battles.
An implausible plotline including money-laundering, a bank on Cyprus and the Russian mafia...
...oh! wait...
An implausible plotline including money-laundering, a bank on Cyprus and the Russian mafia......oh! wait...
September 17, 2018
This was a fast paced thriller from the Le Carre cannon. I enjoyed the writing style, but parts of it seemed convoluted and forced. It didn’t seem to have the natural flow that Le Carre’s stories usually have.
But reading this was also bittersweet. As of this time, this was the last Le Carre book I had to read. Now that I have read all the fiction, it is time to wait to see if he surprises us with one more.
But reading this was also bittersweet. As of this time, this was the last Le Carre book I had to read. Now that I have read all the fiction, it is time to wait to see if he surprises us with one more.
November 24, 2010
The latest novel by John le Carre is getting positive reviews all over the place with sentiments exclaiming that the old le Carre is back and that he has dropped the preaching tone of his last few efforts. Personally, I like it when he preaches to us about the ills of our modern world.
In Our Kind of Traitor, I felt the master of spy literature was holding back just a tad and I purely hated the way this novel ended. I just felt lost through much of the story, but that could be because I do not understand global finance. Not one bit.
My take is that this is a gangster-trying-to-go-straight story. Percolating beneath that is the picture of British government being so in the grip of vested interests and greedy politicians that the true traitor lies there. Is that the meaning of the title?
A Russian gangster, an idealistic young teacher from Oxford, his much more realistic girlfriend, the usual failed spy and the usual rogue spy; all the elements are there but it didn't come together well for me. John le Carre has stumped me before. I remember feeling like I was really missing something in The Little Drummer Girl. My husband liked Our Kind of Traitor just fine and explained some of it to me.
If you have read it, liked it and are now laughing up your sleeve about me, please...comment!
In Our Kind of Traitor, I felt the master of spy literature was holding back just a tad and I purely hated the way this novel ended. I just felt lost through much of the story, but that could be because I do not understand global finance. Not one bit.
My take is that this is a gangster-trying-to-go-straight story. Percolating beneath that is the picture of British government being so in the grip of vested interests and greedy politicians that the true traitor lies there. Is that the meaning of the title?
A Russian gangster, an idealistic young teacher from Oxford, his much more realistic girlfriend, the usual failed spy and the usual rogue spy; all the elements are there but it didn't come together well for me. John le Carre has stumped me before. I remember feeling like I was really missing something in The Little Drummer Girl. My husband liked Our Kind of Traitor just fine and explained some of it to me.
If you have read it, liked it and are now laughing up your sleeve about me, please...comment!
December 23, 2010
Not at the level of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold or the Smiley series, but still, very very good, and better than most of the stuff that le Carre has written since the end of the cold war.
What's great about it? His effortless plotting and his thorough knowledge of the amorality of the world's politics. It was a thrilling read. I devoured it over a period of two days, and was sorry when it came to an end.
For my taste, there were too many pages of slangy conversation as exposition, and not nearly enough soaring passages of bleak prose, at which le Carre is unparalleled. Too much show; not enough tell.
Still, second tier le Carre is still better than the vast majority of espionage writers working today. I gave it only four stars because his earlier books are masterpieces of literature, not just masterpieces of literary espionage.
What's great about it? His effortless plotting and his thorough knowledge of the amorality of the world's politics. It was a thrilling read. I devoured it over a period of two days, and was sorry when it came to an end.
For my taste, there were too many pages of slangy conversation as exposition, and not nearly enough soaring passages of bleak prose, at which le Carre is unparalleled. Too much show; not enough tell.
Still, second tier le Carre is still better than the vast majority of espionage writers working today. I gave it only four stars because his earlier books are masterpieces of literature, not just masterpieces of literary espionage.
November 3, 2024
You have to wait more than at least one hundred muddy pages (which could have been no more than ten very easily...) in order to discover something out of the ordinary.
There are tiring temporal overlaps, a lack of decent action, tangled reasoning, all of them together make you almost drop the book. So, you have to be patient enough to reach the ending, a predictable sad one. And a strong similarity, perhaps a too strong one, to Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana"...
There are tiring temporal overlaps, a lack of decent action, tangled reasoning, all of them together make you almost drop the book. So, you have to be patient enough to reach the ending, a predictable sad one. And a strong similarity, perhaps a too strong one, to Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana"...
June 17, 2020
Dima may well be the funniest, wildest, crassest character in the Le Carre canon. All in all, this is a decent book. Certainly not Le Carrie’s best, but some key moments in this book illumine all of Le Carrie’s books:
• It maddens me how meticulous a storyteller Le Carre can be. The entire story comes down, in one way or another, to a professor and a tennis match and a bit of wiring on an emergency door. The tiniest details become so significant with Le Carrie’s deft hand
• The quiet of the novel and in all of his work stands at a stark contrast to James Bond. You can have a double homicide in a Le Carre novel and the mere lack of response is precisely why builds tension
• The craft of spying is never so well written as with John.
Great to see a master at work, even in a minor work.
But, having finished it, the double tragedy of two friends caught up in the mystical and mystifying web of spies — the sheer unknowns of how these things end for any poor souls involved — leaves us with the sort of ache we might have felt had we too been mere academics asked, while on summer break, to fetch some intelligence for our various countries of origin, only to watch the key members fall and fail.
We don't know why things explode, why they perish, where they go, from whence they come — we, like the citizens of the The Men in Black: Initiation · Encounter · Invocation world, can only go about our merry lives if we *do not know about it*
And so we find ourselves watching planes take off from tarmacs and ships leaving port peacefully, only to find out about some utter devastation in the papers the next day that have no cause in terror, theft, money laundering, or any other typical nefarious purpose. The peace of spies comes not in lack of violence, wholeness, or sabbath.
But simply a Wittgensteinian move: that in terms of international relations, we speak about all we can speak about, but the rest we must pass over in silence.
• It maddens me how meticulous a storyteller Le Carre can be. The entire story comes down, in one way or another, to a professor and a tennis match and a bit of wiring on an emergency door. The tiniest details become so significant with Le Carrie’s deft hand
• The quiet of the novel and in all of his work stands at a stark contrast to James Bond. You can have a double homicide in a Le Carre novel and the mere lack of response is precisely why builds tension
• The craft of spying is never so well written as with John.
Great to see a master at work, even in a minor work.
But, having finished it, the double tragedy of two friends caught up in the mystical and mystifying web of spies — the sheer unknowns of how these things end for any poor souls involved — leaves us with the sort of ache we might have felt had we too been mere academics asked, while on summer break, to fetch some intelligence for our various countries of origin, only to watch the key members fall and fail.
We don't know why things explode, why they perish, where they go, from whence they come — we, like the citizens of the The Men in Black: Initiation · Encounter · Invocation world, can only go about our merry lives if we *do not know about it*
And so we find ourselves watching planes take off from tarmacs and ships leaving port peacefully, only to find out about some utter devastation in the papers the next day that have no cause in terror, theft, money laundering, or any other typical nefarious purpose. The peace of spies comes not in lack of violence, wholeness, or sabbath.
But simply a Wittgensteinian move: that in terms of international relations, we speak about all we can speak about, but the rest we must pass over in silence.
September 15, 2023
Intense and riveting, with a masterfully crafted intricate plot, this espionage thriller is classic Le Carré, complete with a tragic and abrupt finale. Would it kill the author to just once write a happy and heroic ending? I'd give five stars for that....😆
July 2, 2017
“Perry y Gail acaban de regresar de unas vacaciones en el Caribe, donde conocieron al misterioso Dima, un millonario ruso que teme por su propia vida. El hombre cree que sólo podrá salvarse con la colaboración de Perry. Y Dima tiene dinero y está preparado para pagar lo que sea necesario”.
En comparación a otras novelas de LeCarré, “Un traidor como los nuestros” la he encontrado menos elaborada. Como suele ser habitual en sus relatos, tarda bastantes páginas en enganchar, pero cuando lo consigue, el interés te mantendrá pegado a la lectura hasta el final. Final que me ha decepcionado bastante, para ser totalmente sincero. El bien y el mal se difuminan de tal forma en este constante juego mental, que al final no sabes bien con qué bando quedarte. Esta novela tiene algo de “claustrofóbica”, y no me dejó tan buen sabor de boca como otras grandes novelas del autor. Con otro final, le pondría cuatro ó hasta cinco estrellas, pero creo que no merece más de tres.
En comparación a otras novelas de LeCarré, “Un traidor como los nuestros” la he encontrado menos elaborada. Como suele ser habitual en sus relatos, tarda bastantes páginas en enganchar, pero cuando lo consigue, el interés te mantendrá pegado a la lectura hasta el final. Final que me ha decepcionado bastante, para ser totalmente sincero. El bien y el mal se difuminan de tal forma en este constante juego mental, que al final no sabes bien con qué bando quedarte. Esta novela tiene algo de “claustrofóbica”, y no me dejó tan buen sabor de boca como otras grandes novelas del autor. Con otro final, le pondría cuatro ó hasta cinco estrellas, pero creo que no merece más de tres.
April 6, 2013
four and half stars
the first three quarters were thrilling and brilliant...the last quarter still excellent but somewhat less so
the first three quarters were thrilling and brilliant...the last quarter still excellent but somewhat less so
March 26, 2015
For me at least, I think the problem was that it lacked verisimilitude. I'm sure John le Carre has forgotten more about the inner workings of the intelligence services than I will ever know, although at nearly 80, I wonder if he is quite as up to speed on how (and to some extent, if) MI6 go about infiltrating Russian crime groups as he was on the Cold War.
I just couldn't believe that MI6 would recruit someone solely on the basis that he had had a chance meeting with a Russian vory/oligarch while on a tennis holiday in Antigua. Or, for that matter, why Dima, the Russian, would ever have decided to try to use him as a go-between with the UK Government. And while he was admittedly lightly drawn, I never really understood why said character, Perry, would accept the job either.
It might have been simply that I wasn't paying enough attention, but I never got my head around quite what the deal that Dima was trying to cut with the UK actually was - only that it involved betraying some of his criminal confederates, whom he felt had betrayed him. Nor did I grasp in more than the vaguest way what it was that the sinister Aubrey Longrigg MP (a kind of melding of George Osborne and Peter Mandelson) was trying to gain from working with them.
The book wasn't without its redeeming features. I quite liked the sub-plot about Dima's rather lonely lost children. And the spy, Luke, with his shambolic private life and nagging personal doubts about his mission, felt like he'd wandered in from a (probably rather better) Graham Greene novel.
By the end, I can't help thinking that le Carre is most at home working against the backdrop of the cold war. Maybe Putin's desire to reignite it (if that isn't the wrong term) will provide the backdrop for one last great le Carre spy thriller...
I just couldn't believe that MI6 would recruit someone solely on the basis that he had had a chance meeting with a Russian vory/oligarch while on a tennis holiday in Antigua. Or, for that matter, why Dima, the Russian, would ever have decided to try to use him as a go-between with the UK Government. And while he was admittedly lightly drawn, I never really understood why said character, Perry, would accept the job either.
It might have been simply that I wasn't paying enough attention, but I never got my head around quite what the deal that Dima was trying to cut with the UK actually was - only that it involved betraying some of his criminal confederates, whom he felt had betrayed him. Nor did I grasp in more than the vaguest way what it was that the sinister Aubrey Longrigg MP (a kind of melding of George Osborne and Peter Mandelson) was trying to gain from working with them.
The book wasn't without its redeeming features. I quite liked the sub-plot about Dima's rather lonely lost children. And the spy, Luke, with his shambolic private life and nagging personal doubts about his mission, felt like he'd wandered in from a (probably rather better) Graham Greene novel.
By the end, I can't help thinking that le Carre is most at home working against the backdrop of the cold war. Maybe Putin's desire to reignite it (if that isn't the wrong term) will provide the backdrop for one last great le Carre spy thriller...
February 12, 2013
If it were possible I would have given this book 1/2 a star. It was that bad.
Like everyone else on here I have my favourite authors who I know that once I open their books, I will be entertained from start to finish. I do however try to broaden my horizons and try books by authors that maybe I've previously shied away from. I did this with both Andy McNab and Chris Ryan and have been plesantly surprised and still continue to read books by these authors.
Unfortunately this book had absolutely nothing to recommend it. The plot as far as I could follow was just silly and the excution of it by the author is as poor as anything else I have read. This has to be the worst book that I have read in a long time.
I know that this author has a good reputation and many of his books have been made into films with all star casts, but I'm guessing that this one won't be (unless it's given a total makeover by the script department/writers).
You might ask, why did I continue to read the book? This is a good question. I generally try to finish all books that I start, for no other reason other than I have read some good books that have started slowly.
Finally if any of you Goodreads people know of any good books by Le Carre, then I would be very grateful if you could point me in the right direction. Thank you
Like everyone else on here I have my favourite authors who I know that once I open their books, I will be entertained from start to finish. I do however try to broaden my horizons and try books by authors that maybe I've previously shied away from. I did this with both Andy McNab and Chris Ryan and have been plesantly surprised and still continue to read books by these authors.
Unfortunately this book had absolutely nothing to recommend it. The plot as far as I could follow was just silly and the excution of it by the author is as poor as anything else I have read. This has to be the worst book that I have read in a long time.
I know that this author has a good reputation and many of his books have been made into films with all star casts, but I'm guessing that this one won't be (unless it's given a total makeover by the script department/writers).
You might ask, why did I continue to read the book? This is a good question. I generally try to finish all books that I start, for no other reason other than I have read some good books that have started slowly.
Finally if any of you Goodreads people know of any good books by Le Carre, then I would be very grateful if you could point me in the right direction. Thank you
May 16, 2012
If you're a Russian godfather who wants to spill evil
banking beans involving the west, do you just snaffle
a cute UK couple on holiday in Antigua and grunt, "Take
me to your leader" ?
LeC moves briskly fr the Cold War to the Russ mafia and
corrupt banking, suggested by news stories. Very good.
Then, damnit, the way he drawls his story -- exposition,
Talking Heds, fractured sequence, past/present tense --
is downright deadly.
Meantime, we'd all like to know his theories on the young
UK spy found dead at home locked in a duffel bag. Which of
two countries dunit? Let's add the JP/Chase scandal of 2012.
banking beans involving the west, do you just snaffle
a cute UK couple on holiday in Antigua and grunt, "Take
me to your leader" ?
LeC moves briskly fr the Cold War to the Russ mafia and
corrupt banking, suggested by news stories. Very good.
Then, damnit, the way he drawls his story -- exposition,
Talking Heds, fractured sequence, past/present tense --
is downright deadly.
Meantime, we'd all like to know his theories on the young
UK spy found dead at home locked in a duffel bag. Which of
two countries dunit? Let's add the JP/Chase scandal of 2012.
March 27, 2021
Perry and Gail were on a much needed holiday on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Perry was a big tennis player and along with the slightly overweight pro he had arranged a game with a honeymoon couple from India. It was a close-fought game and they even managed to draw a small crowd.
One of those watching was a Russian called Dima. He is a slightly aloof character, but he oozes power. He wants to play a game of tennis too and Perry reluctantly agrees. With Dima is his family, but also has an entourage of heavies that are there to ensure that their man is well protected. Dima has made his fortune in money laundering, and in deeply immersed in lucrative and very dodgy deals with the Russian mafia. His connections in the webs of high finance even reach into the British political elite and he has begun to realise that his position is a huge liability as he knows too many people.
Dima needs a sympathetic Englishman to put him in touch with the MI6 and with, Perry, he has struck it lucky. They reluctantly agree to help and take a USB stick back home with them. He knows a friend of a friend who is something important is the secret world and passes it onto them. He thinks that he has done his bit, but both Dima and MI6 want him and Gail to be the go-between and common point of contact. They never wanted to be spies; now they are in the secret world way over their heads.
I won’t give any more plot details away except that Le Carre has done it again with this book. It doesn’t have the same suspense or feeling of dread as his earlier books do though; this is more of a moral tale and most importantly a warning as to what the city (still) is doing by attracting vast sums of dirty money to be laundered through its systems. It is permeated with spycraft and dealings between those at the firm who realise that the asset they have secured is going to disrupt the cosy and very lucrative financial dealings that the city is looking forward to doing with the Russians. It doesn’t make it any less readable though and he is the master of the unexpected.
One of those watching was a Russian called Dima. He is a slightly aloof character, but he oozes power. He wants to play a game of tennis too and Perry reluctantly agrees. With Dima is his family, but also has an entourage of heavies that are there to ensure that their man is well protected. Dima has made his fortune in money laundering, and in deeply immersed in lucrative and very dodgy deals with the Russian mafia. His connections in the webs of high finance even reach into the British political elite and he has begun to realise that his position is a huge liability as he knows too many people.
Dima needs a sympathetic Englishman to put him in touch with the MI6 and with, Perry, he has struck it lucky. They reluctantly agree to help and take a USB stick back home with them. He knows a friend of a friend who is something important is the secret world and passes it onto them. He thinks that he has done his bit, but both Dima and MI6 want him and Gail to be the go-between and common point of contact. They never wanted to be spies; now they are in the secret world way over their heads.
I won’t give any more plot details away except that Le Carre has done it again with this book. It doesn’t have the same suspense or feeling of dread as his earlier books do though; this is more of a moral tale and most importantly a warning as to what the city (still) is doing by attracting vast sums of dirty money to be laundered through its systems. It is permeated with spycraft and dealings between those at the firm who realise that the asset they have secured is going to disrupt the cosy and very lucrative financial dealings that the city is looking forward to doing with the Russians. It doesn’t make it any less readable though and he is the master of the unexpected.
October 22, 2024
Nunca logro atraparme y ese final que no es final, es como que ya no sabía cómo continuar el libro y lo hizo explotar todo.
April 6, 2017
David John Moore Cornwell--the man the world has come to know as John le Carre--was the son of a con man and a mother he met only at age 21. He spent years in the 1950s and 1960s working for MI5 and MI6 in the most difficult years of the Cold War. His frequently troubled life experiences afforded him the real-world experience that lent such authenticity and depth to the Cold War espionage novels he wrote so ably in the decades to come.
Le Carre's conflicted alter ego, George Smiley, the protagonist of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and other early le Carre novels, embodied the inner doubts of that seemingly simpler time that foreshadowed the distrust and insecurities of the 60s and 70s, once we had lost our faith in the institutions that dominated our world.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, le Carre skillfully adapted, turning to writing about the more complex, multipolar world that has become ever more familiar to us. His field of battle was still espionage. But his subtext, increasingly, was politics--politics on the grand, international scale. Le Carre's profound distaste for U.S. interventionist policies emerged clearly. Similarly, he showed his hand (most dramatically in The Constant Gardener) for the large, multinational corporations that have come to overshadow the lives we lead. His characters still emerged as fully formed human beings, for the most part. But his writing took on a moralistic tone that some readers found objectionable.
Le Carre's latest work, Our Kind of Traitor, bears a stronger thematic resemblance to the Smiley novels than most of his other recent books. The protagonist--a young, unmarried English couple, actually--found themselves mysteriously caught up in a bizarre espionage caper more complex than any George Smiley might have conjured up. The story revolves around a Russian mafia boss (who proudly calls himself the world's "number one money-launderer") and the attempts of a renegade in the English secret service to bring him and his family to asylum in Britain. In the renegade agent's bruising battles with the powers that be to gain the authority for his plan, and in the doubts and recriminations of the young couple he has dragged into the action, there is much that's reminiscent of Smiley's tortured qualms about the moral implications of his work. Four decades later, MI6 is a different beast, of course--a shadow of its former self, sometimes struggling to justify its existence. But Our Kind of Traitor awakens the same sort of moral ambiguity and distrust for authority and convention as did The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Le Carre's conflicted alter ego, George Smiley, the protagonist of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and other early le Carre novels, embodied the inner doubts of that seemingly simpler time that foreshadowed the distrust and insecurities of the 60s and 70s, once we had lost our faith in the institutions that dominated our world.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, le Carre skillfully adapted, turning to writing about the more complex, multipolar world that has become ever more familiar to us. His field of battle was still espionage. But his subtext, increasingly, was politics--politics on the grand, international scale. Le Carre's profound distaste for U.S. interventionist policies emerged clearly. Similarly, he showed his hand (most dramatically in The Constant Gardener) for the large, multinational corporations that have come to overshadow the lives we lead. His characters still emerged as fully formed human beings, for the most part. But his writing took on a moralistic tone that some readers found objectionable.
Le Carre's latest work, Our Kind of Traitor, bears a stronger thematic resemblance to the Smiley novels than most of his other recent books. The protagonist--a young, unmarried English couple, actually--found themselves mysteriously caught up in a bizarre espionage caper more complex than any George Smiley might have conjured up. The story revolves around a Russian mafia boss (who proudly calls himself the world's "number one money-launderer") and the attempts of a renegade in the English secret service to bring him and his family to asylum in Britain. In the renegade agent's bruising battles with the powers that be to gain the authority for his plan, and in the doubts and recriminations of the young couple he has dragged into the action, there is much that's reminiscent of Smiley's tortured qualms about the moral implications of his work. Four decades later, MI6 is a different beast, of course--a shadow of its former self, sometimes struggling to justify its existence. But Our Kind of Traitor awakens the same sort of moral ambiguity and distrust for authority and convention as did The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
March 29, 2015
This was the first John le Carre book which I have picked up in a while. It came with high literary acclaim, and so I was quite looking forward to reading it. Sadly I was quite disappointed with it, there was no real sense of suspense, and it seemed quite laboured and ponderous, not the le Carre books I remember of old.
A professional couple from England, Perry and Gail, are on a tennis holiday in Antigua, when they are forcibly befriended by Dima. He is a Russian money launderer for the Vory, but he wants him and his family relocated, safely, to London under new identities. He wants Perry to broker the deal with the British intelligence agencies, a tall order for a University lecturer. Feeling quite sympathetic towards Dima and his family, Perry tries his best. The carrot Dima dangles before the intelligence community, is his vast knowledge of financial shady dealings throughout the world, including London.
I couldn't really get to feel any affinity with the various characters. The tale was confusing in places, and I found myself going back several pages and rereading pieces, trying to make sense of it all.
A professional couple from England, Perry and Gail, are on a tennis holiday in Antigua, when they are forcibly befriended by Dima. He is a Russian money launderer for the Vory, but he wants him and his family relocated, safely, to London under new identities. He wants Perry to broker the deal with the British intelligence agencies, a tall order for a University lecturer. Feeling quite sympathetic towards Dima and his family, Perry tries his best. The carrot Dima dangles before the intelligence community, is his vast knowledge of financial shady dealings throughout the world, including London.
I couldn't really get to feel any affinity with the various characters. The tale was confusing in places, and I found myself going back several pages and rereading pieces, trying to make sense of it all.
September 20, 2022
Well crafted. Also sad.
June 2, 2022
Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré is a novel about a Russian money-launderer (Dima) who seeks the help of a friendly British couple (Perry and Gail) when they meet on the island of Antigua. Dima's need: to reach British intelligence and defect, not from the USSR, but from the Russian mafia he is fatally associated with.
Perry is a dissatisfied academic; Gail is a rising barrister. Neither of them is connected to British intelligence, but Perry hazards a guess that an Oxford associate might be able to put everyone together.
Enter Hector, who leaps at this opportunity to catch a big fish and engineer payback within the "Service." He's been trampled, not enjoyed it, and now, in a semi-rogue fashion, he confirms not only that Dima knows incredible amounts about incredible sums being laundered worldwide but also that there is a pathway to extracting Dima (and his family) from the clutches of the Russian mafia dons (led by someone known as the Prince) who want to kill him.
le Carré is a professional espionage writer who in this book, at least, shifts the focus of the "Service" from intelligence to crime fighting. The ironies, bits of tradecraft, hardened characters, long-lived rivalries of his earlier novels remain more or less the same, though.
At the heart of such writing there's always a competition and it's not necessarily plot-related. It's a competition between proceduralism and character. Intelligence as le Carré portrays it is an elaborate sequence of getting things right; this is what moves the story more than the typical mix of iconoclastic spies, smarmy bad guys, and unwitting accomplices.
As a consequence, Hector, Perry, Gail, Dima and others are somewhat forced. There's "backstory" to each of them, but it doesn't add up to three-dimensional characterization. Why? Perhaps because some features of character development are contingent upon characters in idle moments, adrift, floating this way and that. And in a spy or crime book you need to keep them pointed in a given direction which, again, le Carré works out according to the idiosyncracies of secrecy.
Having said that, I did find the final passages, when finally released from bureaucratic purgatory, almost touching. A part of Dima that has been presented earlier in the book emerges with genuine pathos: he realizes that he is in the process of becoming what you might call a free prisoner.
le Carré writes to entertain. He's not a moralist like Graham Greene. But he does do a lot with this theme of the free prisoner (my phrase, not his) because in the end, he seems to be saying, we're all such creatures. No matter how ingenious and persistent a rogue like Hector might be, or idealistic Perry might be, or perceptive as Gail might be, they all (we all) live in a world governed by the abstract collective behavior of vast, intertwined sectors that are called, for instance, bureaucracy, the economy, science, the Internet…impersonal, irritating, not always rational processes that in the 21st century are determinative.
At one point in the novel, Hector's nemesis in the "Service" asks, "So what?" He means so what if there is a black world in which money gets laundered white, just as long as Great Britain and the City of London get their share of it when it's clean.
Again, a Graham Greene would take this question, focus hard on the nemesis, make a psychological study of him in crisis, and give us a true lesson in darkness. Likewise Conrad or Dostoevsky. In le Carré's fictional world, the nemesis is asking a great question that's never answered; le Carré reduces motivation to bureaucratic revenge and criminal expediency. This is what separates someone as talented as he from greater literary talents. He entertains us, he may know enough about espionage and crime to engage us, but his descriptions of existential imprisonment in the modern era are more for fun than enlightenment.
For more of my comments on contemporary writing, see Tuppence Reviews (Kindle).
Perry is a dissatisfied academic; Gail is a rising barrister. Neither of them is connected to British intelligence, but Perry hazards a guess that an Oxford associate might be able to put everyone together.
Enter Hector, who leaps at this opportunity to catch a big fish and engineer payback within the "Service." He's been trampled, not enjoyed it, and now, in a semi-rogue fashion, he confirms not only that Dima knows incredible amounts about incredible sums being laundered worldwide but also that there is a pathway to extracting Dima (and his family) from the clutches of the Russian mafia dons (led by someone known as the Prince) who want to kill him.
le Carré is a professional espionage writer who in this book, at least, shifts the focus of the "Service" from intelligence to crime fighting. The ironies, bits of tradecraft, hardened characters, long-lived rivalries of his earlier novels remain more or less the same, though.
At the heart of such writing there's always a competition and it's not necessarily plot-related. It's a competition between proceduralism and character. Intelligence as le Carré portrays it is an elaborate sequence of getting things right; this is what moves the story more than the typical mix of iconoclastic spies, smarmy bad guys, and unwitting accomplices.
As a consequence, Hector, Perry, Gail, Dima and others are somewhat forced. There's "backstory" to each of them, but it doesn't add up to three-dimensional characterization. Why? Perhaps because some features of character development are contingent upon characters in idle moments, adrift, floating this way and that. And in a spy or crime book you need to keep them pointed in a given direction which, again, le Carré works out according to the idiosyncracies of secrecy.
Having said that, I did find the final passages, when finally released from bureaucratic purgatory, almost touching. A part of Dima that has been presented earlier in the book emerges with genuine pathos: he realizes that he is in the process of becoming what you might call a free prisoner.
le Carré writes to entertain. He's not a moralist like Graham Greene. But he does do a lot with this theme of the free prisoner (my phrase, not his) because in the end, he seems to be saying, we're all such creatures. No matter how ingenious and persistent a rogue like Hector might be, or idealistic Perry might be, or perceptive as Gail might be, they all (we all) live in a world governed by the abstract collective behavior of vast, intertwined sectors that are called, for instance, bureaucracy, the economy, science, the Internet…impersonal, irritating, not always rational processes that in the 21st century are determinative.
At one point in the novel, Hector's nemesis in the "Service" asks, "So what?" He means so what if there is a black world in which money gets laundered white, just as long as Great Britain and the City of London get their share of it when it's clean.
Again, a Graham Greene would take this question, focus hard on the nemesis, make a psychological study of him in crisis, and give us a true lesson in darkness. Likewise Conrad or Dostoevsky. In le Carré's fictional world, the nemesis is asking a great question that's never answered; le Carré reduces motivation to bureaucratic revenge and criminal expediency. This is what separates someone as talented as he from greater literary talents. He entertains us, he may know enough about espionage and crime to engage us, but his descriptions of existential imprisonment in the modern era are more for fun than enlightenment.
For more of my comments on contemporary writing, see Tuppence Reviews (Kindle).
April 13, 2021
It requires some skill to write sentences as bizarre and choking on themselves as LeCarre's.
Don't believe me? This is the first sentence of the book: "At seven o'clock of a Caribbean morning, on the island of Antigua, one Peregrine Makepiece, otherwise known as Perry, an all-around amateur athlete of distinction and until recently tutor in English literature at a distinguished Oxford college, played three sets of tennis against a muscular, stiff-backed, bald, brown-eyed Russian man of dignified bearing in his middle fifties called Dima."
Don't believe me? This is the first sentence of the book: "At seven o'clock of a Caribbean morning, on the island of Antigua, one Peregrine Makepiece, otherwise known as Perry, an all-around amateur athlete of distinction and until recently tutor in English literature at a distinguished Oxford college, played three sets of tennis against a muscular, stiff-backed, bald, brown-eyed Russian man of dignified bearing in his middle fifties called Dima."
January 9, 2011
In the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers collapse and the onset of world economic crisis, we find a young English couple, Perry and Gail, having a vacation in Antigua. There they meet a Russian named Dima, who, it appears, is linked to the Russian mafia and who may be seeking a way to slip away from their clutches. He engages Perry to play a game of tennis, a game that is watched by Dima's extended family and bodyguards. After the game, he begins to test Perry to see whether he might be his ticket "out". He wants to know whether Perry is a spy or has any connections to the vaunted British Secret Service.
No, and no. Perry, the academic, is not a spy and has no connections but he is intrigued by Dima and upon returning to England, he manages to contact the Secret Service and tell them about Dima. Dima has called himself the world's number one money launderer and, as such, he has much information which he is offering to the British if they will get him and his family out.
Just how a certain section of the British Secret Service plans to do that, using Perry and Gail as a conduit of information and as cover for the escaping Russians, makes up the bulk of le Carre's story. It is a complicated story, the plotline worthy of le Carre's best. The suspense builds as the day of the great escape nears and its prospect of success is endangered by personal complications of some of the characters. Will the Russian and his disparate family ever see the shores of England or will the bad guys win again?
John le Carre' can hardly be said to be brimming over with optimism at the state of the world. The last three of his books that I have read, "The Constant Gardener", "Absolute Friends", and now this one, have all been infused with a deep pessimism about the way of the world and whether it is possible to find justice in such a world.
John le Carre' has, of course, had a long and successful career writing about the men and women who move in the shadowy world of espionage and who try in their own complicated way, playing games within games, to make things right. He was the master of the great spy novel during the Cold War years. Now that the world has changed, he still is.
No, and no. Perry, the academic, is not a spy and has no connections but he is intrigued by Dima and upon returning to England, he manages to contact the Secret Service and tell them about Dima. Dima has called himself the world's number one money launderer and, as such, he has much information which he is offering to the British if they will get him and his family out.
Just how a certain section of the British Secret Service plans to do that, using Perry and Gail as a conduit of information and as cover for the escaping Russians, makes up the bulk of le Carre's story. It is a complicated story, the plotline worthy of le Carre's best. The suspense builds as the day of the great escape nears and its prospect of success is endangered by personal complications of some of the characters. Will the Russian and his disparate family ever see the shores of England or will the bad guys win again?
John le Carre' can hardly be said to be brimming over with optimism at the state of the world. The last three of his books that I have read, "The Constant Gardener", "Absolute Friends", and now this one, have all been infused with a deep pessimism about the way of the world and whether it is possible to find justice in such a world.
John le Carre' has, of course, had a long and successful career writing about the men and women who move in the shadowy world of espionage and who try in their own complicated way, playing games within games, to make things right. He was the master of the great spy novel during the Cold War years. Now that the world has changed, he still is.
August 1, 2011
If what you know of the world comes from newspapers, or from the T.V. news, then your view is naive, selective, abridged and childish. If you have any mature sense at all then I think you appreciate this may be true.
All right - so, I'm naive and childish,... hopelessly so. It's the only way I can go on living in my personally simplified version of reality. Reading Le Carre though connects me with another, darker, reality, one I fear might be closer to the truth, whether it's "cold war", or whatever your latter day nightmare has been: pick your decade since 1960..
Is your pension screwed? Are you wondering where all your money's gone? Are you wondering why the once godlike "Banking Industry" has brought the western world to ruin, and has had to bailed out by the humble, unwashed taxpayer - i.e. "you"? Do you want to hate the "financial services" industry/government/corrupt "global capitalist ideology" any more than you do already? Read this book.
Our Kind of Traitor returns to Russia, post "cold war", to Russian "organised crime", to pan European gangsterism, and "money laundering" on a scale that will leave you gasping for breath and praying that nothing you've read here can possibly be true?
All of the Le Carre ingredients are present - fascinating characters, from the leading to the minor, also an ability to winkle out the archetypically "heroic" in the most sympathetic yet also the most odious of character.
I'm a fan of Le Carre because for me no one else does a "spy story" that I can even remotely believe in. This is the best book I've read all year.
All right - so, I'm naive and childish,... hopelessly so. It's the only way I can go on living in my personally simplified version of reality. Reading Le Carre though connects me with another, darker, reality, one I fear might be closer to the truth, whether it's "cold war", or whatever your latter day nightmare has been: pick your decade since 1960..
Is your pension screwed? Are you wondering where all your money's gone? Are you wondering why the once godlike "Banking Industry" has brought the western world to ruin, and has had to bailed out by the humble, unwashed taxpayer - i.e. "you"? Do you want to hate the "financial services" industry/government/corrupt "global capitalist ideology" any more than you do already? Read this book.
Our Kind of Traitor returns to Russia, post "cold war", to Russian "organised crime", to pan European gangsterism, and "money laundering" on a scale that will leave you gasping for breath and praying that nothing you've read here can possibly be true?
All of the Le Carre ingredients are present - fascinating characters, from the leading to the minor, also an ability to winkle out the archetypically "heroic" in the most sympathetic yet also the most odious of character.
I'm a fan of Le Carre because for me no one else does a "spy story" that I can even remotely believe in. This is the best book I've read all year.
July 30, 2011
There is always more potential in a John le Carre novel than in anyone else writing books. There is also, almost always, some experimental flaw that's bigger than anyone else's. I've learned to take the good and ignore the bad. He writes bigger books than almost anyone else, enthralling even when they're flawed.
Here we have the recruitment of a moneyman from the Russian mafia by the British Secret Service. Dima, 'our kind of traitor,' is the most interesting, wound-up, larger-than-life, nervy character I can remember reading in years. He is the beating pulse of this tale, a man trying to get out of the life before new masters in the mafia kill him and his family. He runs across a pair of young Brits on vacation and co-opts them into becoming couriers for him, a funnel to deliver his desperation back to the real spies in London.
Of course, the people he connects up with are good spies, but they report back to a political system, one already half owned by Dima's mafia bosses. The tale gets bogged down in the procedure of the spy system and Dima leaves the book for most of the vast middle. Also, the main characters for most of the story, the British couple, aren't terribly interesting.
You will see the (unhappy) ending coming from a distance off, especially if you know and like le Carre's previous offerings. The pleasure of meeting Dima is worth the pain of the flaws. This is the best book I've read by le Carre since the Smiley novels. Please enjoy.
Here we have the recruitment of a moneyman from the Russian mafia by the British Secret Service. Dima, 'our kind of traitor,' is the most interesting, wound-up, larger-than-life, nervy character I can remember reading in years. He is the beating pulse of this tale, a man trying to get out of the life before new masters in the mafia kill him and his family. He runs across a pair of young Brits on vacation and co-opts them into becoming couriers for him, a funnel to deliver his desperation back to the real spies in London.
Of course, the people he connects up with are good spies, but they report back to a political system, one already half owned by Dima's mafia bosses. The tale gets bogged down in the procedure of the spy system and Dima leaves the book for most of the vast middle. Also, the main characters for most of the story, the British couple, aren't terribly interesting.
You will see the (unhappy) ending coming from a distance off, especially if you know and like le Carre's previous offerings. The pleasure of meeting Dima is worth the pain of the flaws. This is the best book I've read by le Carre since the Smiley novels. Please enjoy.
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