The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Graham Greene called this “the best spy novel I have ever read”, and it would certainly be fair to say that I cannot recall the last time I physically struggled to put a book down prior to reading this. The power of The Spy is that whereas the era in which the work is set (late 1950s/early 1960s peak Cold War Britain and Germany) seems a distant one, the themes/topics/emotional dilemmas covered by le Carré are universal in their nature. Beyond the concepts of loyalty and morality, the broader debate is almost a utilitarian one: what value does one attach to the individual relative to the greater cause, and vice versa? Le Carré's conclusion seems almost depressing in nature: hypocrisy is endemic, and expedience trumps almost everything. The decision (and a surprising one at that) of the novel's reluctant hero, Alec Leamas, to admit defeat and be shot by the GDR represents his “coming in from the cold”, an explicit admission that human emotions matter (not everything in life is “cold”, or objective and rational, subservient to a greater cause). The other (unrelated) enduring power of The Spy is that it is a quite consciously complex plot of not just double but triple crossing. In this sense (as William Boyd notes accurately in his introduction) it appeals to readers; an acknowledgement of their sophistication: “getting” the book is its pleasure, one I would happily reread. 10/10.

By John le Carré