From the master of spy thrillers, John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is a gripping story of love and betrayal at the height of the Cold War. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an afterword by the author and an introduction by William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart.
Alex Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in the shadow of the Berlin Wall for his British masters. He has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last - but only after one final assignment. He must travel deep into the heart of Communist Germany and betray his country, a job that he will do with his usual cynical professionalism. But when George Smiley tries to help a young woman Leamas has befriended, Leamas's mission may prove to be the worst thing he could ever have done. In le Carré's breakthrough work of 1963, the spy story is reborn as a gritty and terrible tale of men who are caught up in politics beyond their imagining.
John le Carré (b. 1931) was educated at the University of Berne and at Lincoln College, Oxford. From 1959 to 1964 he was a member of the British Foreign Service, serving first as Second Secretary in the British Embassy in Bonn and subsequently as Political Consul in Hamburg. He started writing novels in 1961, and has since published twenty-one titles, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), The Tailor of Panama (1996) and The Constant Gardener (2001).
If you enjoyed The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, you might like le Carré's The Looking Glass War, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
'A portrait of a man who has lived by lies and subterfuge for so long, he's forgotten how to tell the truth'
Time
'He can communicate emotion, from sweating fear to despairing love, with terse and compassionate conviction. Above all, he can tell a tale'
Sunday Times
