One of Le Carre's best books, January 6, 2004
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Reviewer: Vassilis Masselos from Psychiko, Athens
Greece |
Le Carre's latest masterpiece spans three historical
periods. The hero, Ted Mundy was born in Pakistan when the
British Empire was crumbling, got a public school education in
a changing England, went to Oxford and then on to Berlin where
he met his fellow radical Shasha, forming an "absolute
friendship".
He and Shasha eventually formed a highly successfull spy
pair during the Cold War, a period of ideological clarity as
to what was right or wrong. After the fall of the Berlin war
Ted finds himself a partner in a language school and, after
this fails miserably, he works as a tour guide in one of Mad
Ludwig's castles in Bavaria. Shasha reappears and they find
themselves involved again, this time in a war-in-Iraq related
operation.
Only now things are not clear as to what is right or wrong.
To quote Shasha "..the coalition has broken half the rules in
the international law books, and intends by its continued
occupation of Iraq to break the other half". Le Carre is
[rightly so] highly critical of what the coalition is doing in
Iraq, his thoughts full of the wisdom of a man whose life
spans the same periods with the book's hero.
This is not only a superb story of friendship, a historical
novel, a well written spy thriller but also a cry of anguish
of an educated citizen of the world caused by the post 9/11
state of world affairs.
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