Synopses & Reviews
An absolutely triumphant bestseller everywhere hailed as the masterpiece toward which John le Carré has been building since the fall of communism. This epic tale of loyalty, betrayal, and international espionage spans the lives of two friends from the riot-torn West Berlin of the 1960s to the grimy looking-glass of Cold War Europe to the present day of terrorism and new alliances alliances that aren't always what they seem to be.
Absolute Friends is the thrilling work of international espionage that le Carré fans have long awaited a brilliant, ferocious, heartbreaking work for the ages.
Review
"No reader, whatever his politics, could fail to be moved by the passion and intelligence of le Carré's latest. For those who feel as he does about the war and its consequences, this book will be a special gift." Publishers Weekly
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"A triumph....A blazingly good novel....Le Carré's best in years." David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle
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"A stunningly timely spy novel....It stands among le Carré's best." Entertainment Weekly
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"As fine a pleasure in the reading as the best of le Carré." Alan Furst, Boston Globe
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"A searing, startling novel that sweeps through much of the twentieth century and up to the present conflict with Iraq." Lev Grossman, Time
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"Unfailingly entertaining....A terrific achievement by the best spy novelist out there as engrossing, well-crafted, and satisfying as anything this observer of the unobserved has produced." Matt Konrad, Minneapolis Star Tribune
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"His best novel in years....John le Carré is the master who raised the contemporary spy novel to the level of fine literature." Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
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"Compelling....John le Carré never, ever phones it in not even on a secure line." Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times Book Review
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"Le Carré is back to what he does best....Absolute Friends is his best book in years." Stephen Alford, Houston Chronicle
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"[T]he novel never becomes the author's soapbox. The human story remains paramount, even if the chilling message is that human stories don't stand much of a chance in the world as we find it." Bill Ott, Booklist (Starred Review)
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"Despite a piercing, compassionate portrait of a decent man struggling to keep up with a world in the throes of constant change, le Carré seems this time outpaced by...the layers upon layers of real-life duplicity in the world since 9/11." Kirkus Reviews
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"Absolute Friends is one of [le Carré's] worst. The master of the Cold War has stumbled over the Iraq war. The poet of ironic detachment has turned shrill." David L. Beck, The San Jose Mercury News
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"[L]e Carré brings the thriller face to face with contemporary politics and...has once again demonstrated his mastery of his chosen genre while at the same time giving lesser, ordinary novelists a masterclass in taking nothing for granted." Robert McCrum, The Observer (U.K.)
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"Le Carré relates all this with his accustomed skill....History can decide whether le Carré is right or wrong...but no one can deny that for the world's leading spy novelist...to take on the White House with such ferocity is a political event of note..." Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post Book World
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"What [began as] a masterful, elegiac character study in the mould of...A Perfect Spy becomes an angry disquisition on contemporary geopolitics....Where once there was a subtle knife, here there is only a blunt stick." Steven Poole, The Guardian (U.K.)
Review
"Le Carré, alas, uses Sasha as his spokesman for his opinions (all of which are well-justified, but that's beside the point) about Western imperialism....What a shame it is to have to say that a book by a writer as subtle and probing as le Carré is such a preachy and didactic bore." Adrienne Miller, Esquire (read the entire Esquire review)
Review
"Character, and the lack of depth, are important elements in the failure of le Carré's latest book....'I only ever cared about the man...I never gave a fig for the ideologies,' George Smiley once said. Le Carré, in this humanly implausible and ideologically enraged novel, appears to give a fig for neither." James Wood, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review)
Synopsis
A "stunningly timely spy novel" that takes readers from 1960s West Berlin to the Iraq War (Entertainment Weekly) from the author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.
Today, Mundy is a down-at-the-heels tour guide in southern Germany, dodging creditors, supporting a new family, and keeping an eye out for trouble while in spare moments vigorously questioning the actions of the country he once bravely served. And trouble finds him, as it has before, in the shape of an old German student friend, radical, and onetime fellow spy, the crippled Sasha, seeker after absolutes, dreamer, and chaos addict. After years of trawling the Middle East and Asia as an itinerant university lecturer, Sasha has yet again discovered the true, the only, answer to life -- this time in the form of a mysterious billionaire philanthropist named Dimitri. Thanks to Dimitri, both Mundy and Sasha will find a path out of poverty, and with it their chance to change a world that both believe is going to the devil. Or will they? Who is Dimitri? Why does Dimitri's gold pour in from mysterious Middle Eastern bank accounts? And why does his apparently noble venture reek less of starry idealism than of treachery and fear? Some gifts are too expensive to accept. Could this be one of them? With a cooler head than Sasha's, Mundy is inclined to think it could.
In Absolute Friends, John le Carre delivers the masterpiece he has been building to since the fall of communism: an epic tale of loyalty and betrayal that spans the lives of two friends from the riot-torn West Berlin of the 1960s to the grimy looking-glass of Cold War Europe to the present day of terrorism and new alliances. This is the novel le Carre fans have been waiting for, a brilliant, ferocious, heartbreaking work for the ages.
"A searing, startling novel that sweeps through much of the twentieth century and up to the present conflict with Iraq." --Lev Grossman, Time
Synopsis
An ex-spy discovers that some free gifts are too expensive to accept when a former friend offers him a path out of poverty and with it their chance to change a world that both believe is going to the devil. Or will they?
About the Author
John le Carré is the author of numerous classic, bestselling novels, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Little Drummer Girl, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Several of his novels have been made into major motion pictures, including The Tailor of Panama and The Russia House. In the 1950s he worked for British Intelligence. He lives in Cornwall, England.