Synopses & Reviews
New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love or pity and remain good "patriots" — this is the fabric of John le Carré's fiercely compelling and current novel
A Most Wanted Man.
A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.
Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client's survival becomes more important to her than her own career — or safety. In pursuit of Issa's mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg.
Annabel, Issa and Brue form an unlikely alliance — and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the "War on Terror," the rival spies of Germany, England and America converge upon the innocents.
Thrilling, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.
Review
"The old spy master hasn't lost his touch....Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"[L]e Carré, without lecturing, deftly puts human faces and human costs on the paranoid response to the threat of terrorism." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"There is very little conventional action in this novel, but the tension builds anyway, as we watch the slow, inexorable, almost boring way that institutional will grinds down individual lives." Booklist
Synopsis
Hailed as "the literary master for a generation" (The London Observer), New York Times-bestselling author le Carre returns with a stunning, compelling work set in Hamburg — a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.
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About the Author
John le Carré was born in 1931 and lives in Cornwall, England. His eighteen novels have been translated into thirty-seven languages and include The Little Drummer Girl, A Perfect Spy, The Russia House, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Smiley's People, and The Constant Gardener.