The Looking Glass War (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Review
A book of rare and great power (Financial Times )
A devastating and tragic record of human, not glamour, spies (New York Herald Tribune )
A devastating and tragic record of human, not glamour, spies (New York Herald Tribune )
Publishers Weekly
‘A bitter, bleak, superlatively written novel’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A bleak, unusual and compelling thriller. Fans of le Carre will know not to expect car chases and glamour, but this novel also has little of the complexity, puzzle-solving and intrigue of his better known spy stories.
The plot is fairly simple: a small and out-of-favour military intelligence department in London have a potentially huge discovery on their hands - an unconfirmed and sketchy report of Soviet missiles being stored in East Germany (the period is Cold War, early sixties). In a bid to confirm the discovery - and regain some of their former status and credibility - the department decides to find and train an agent to go over the border, something they have not done for many years.
The majority of the book is taken up with the preparation and training for the mission and the shifting politics and loyalties of those involved. This provides a strange mix of convincing technical detail and le Carre's always excellent character sketches and observations on a certain type of English character.
Without giving too much away of the story, the heart of the book is a study of ambition, resentment, jealousies and fading glories in the intelligence community during this period. The outcome of the mission is almost secondary, but the reader can discern the likely outcome as le Carre carefully reveals the endless possibilities of small details and judgements that can mean the difference between success and failure in this environment.
In conclusion, not your average spy story, not typical le Carre, but still engrossing and worth a read.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Le Carre is famed for his realism, when compared to many other espionage writers. This book followed his huge success with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and was not well received critically. Le Carre felt that this book was the most realistic of all of his novels and he is right. Nothing that you read here is fanciful or contrived, but as a result the novel lacks an edge that le Carre normally would provide. This novel is by no means a bad one, it is maybe a little too realistic and thus missed out on providing the escapism that most people read espionage thrillers for.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Le Carre has a great gift for writing fantastic spy stories. In this book, the department responsible for military intelligence find it necessary to send an agent into East Germany - something that they haven't done for a great many years. George Smiley puts in a few appearances as a guiding hand. The whole book is fantastic and well up to Le Carre's normal standard.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A personal Le Carré favourite
I haven't read this book in some time but I have read it a number of times in the past, and I've just listened to the BBC's excellent adaptation of it. Read more
Published 12 days ago by Nom Prénom
An earlier and darker Le Carre
The Looking Glass War takes a classic thriler set-up - rumours of Russian rockets in East Germany, threatening another Cuban Missile crisis - but rather than using this as a hook... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Neil Black
The Looking Glass War - Just who are we fighting?,
This is the fourth of a series of BBC adaptations of all John Le Carre's Smiley books, starring Simon Russell Beale as Smiley. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Victor
A flawed operation gets a flawed but often superb radio adaptation
NB: As is their wont, Amazon have bundled reviews of the BBC audio book radio adaptation with the novel itself. This review is of the 2CD BBC radio adaptation. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Trevor Willsmer
The Looking Glass War - Just who are we fighting?
This is the fourth of a series of BBC adaptations of all John Le Carre's Smiley books, starring Simon Russell Beale as Smiley. Read more
Published on 18 Mar 2010 by Victor
A good stab at a difficult story.
I am a John Le Carre fan - and I've read all of his books - and this one, which has languished behind the blockbusters, has always been my favourite. Read more
Published on 19 Oct 2009 by Aaron Grantham
Good, but not quite there
I have listened to this after trying out another one in the series (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (BBC Audio)) and, for some reasons, it doesn't seem to have the same sleezy... Read more
Published on 15 Oct 2009 by Dave M
Painfully brilliant - spoiler alert
A group of people run an office whose reason for existence has disappeared, but they carry on as usual, eating biscuits and doing the Times crossword. Read more
Published on 22 Jan 2008 by Ms. L. R. Fisher
Not quite there yet
This is one of the early novels of John Le Carre. You can recognise some elements, which again turn up in his later success novels. Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2007 by Thomas Koetzsch
Don't miss this one
This is not perhaps the best-known Le Carre book, but it's my favourite and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't yet discovered it. Read more
Published on 24 April 2007 by Alice Lane
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