First American Edition, 256 pages
English language
Published 1964 by Coward-McCann.
This brilliant novel adds John le Carré's name to the microscopically small list of really great writers of espionage fiction. In truth, it does a great deal more. It is the spy novel to end all spy novels. It dispatches the spun-sugar secret agents of recent fame back to their comic-opera Graustarks forever. Its central figure, Leamas, whose mission is to trap the top spy of East Berlin, is a creation of astonishing reality and authenticity. The plot he sets in motion, and later becomes the principal victim of, is a thing of magnificent complexity. Also of far-reaching implications. For the tension within Leamas is strikingly contemporary. It is the tension of a committed man unable to come to terms with the utterly ruthless machine he serves. Only in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon and Graham Greene's "burnt-out cases" can any comparison be found.
The Spy Who Came in …
This brilliant novel adds John le Carré's name to the microscopically small list of really great writers of espionage fiction. In truth, it does a great deal more. It is the spy novel to end all spy novels. It dispatches the spun-sugar secret agents of recent fame back to their comic-opera Graustarks forever. Its central figure, Leamas, whose mission is to trap the top spy of East Berlin, is a creation of astonishing reality and authenticity. The plot he sets in motion, and later becomes the principal victim of, is a thing of magnificent complexity. Also of far-reaching implications. For the tension within Leamas is strikingly contemporary. It is the tension of a committed man unable to come to terms with the utterly ruthless machine he serves. Only in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon and Graham Greene's "burnt-out cases" can any comparison be found.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a novel of the first order—terrifying in its significance, impressive in its actuality, awesome in its high political import. It happens also to be immensely thrilling.
