Alex Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in Berlin for his British masters, and has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last but only after one final assignment.
Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, has retired to his family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London are to be scrutinised by a generation with no memory of the Cold War. Somebody must be made to pay for innocent blood once spilt in the name of the greater good. Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own story, John le CarrU has given us a novel of superb and enduring quality.
In this, the sequel to Beaches, Cee Cee Bloom, the famous singer and movie star, has been entrusted with the eight-year-old daughter of her friend Bertie, after the latter's tragic death. Then, with a devastating discovery, Cee Cee is forced to come to terms with the depth of her commitment.
"John le Carre's new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and travelling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime." "Tessa's husband, Justin, a career diplomat and amateur gardener at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive. His quest takes him to the Foreign Office in London, across Europe and Canada and back to Africa, to the depths of South Sudan, and finally to the very spot where Tessa died. On his way he meets terror, violence, laughter, conspiracy and knowledge. But his greatest discovery is the woman he barely had time to love."--Jacket
A young Spaniard sets off for South America in 1518 with Cortes and the Conquistadors, propelled by his love's declaration that she will not marry until he returns with a special treasure -- a symbol of their love -- that no man or woman has ever before received. But during his travels he falls in love with Ignacia, a native woman who introduces him to the secrets of the most delicious drink he has ever tasted: chocolate. Their passionate affair is cut short by the chaotic conquest of Mexico. So begins this charming and adventurous story about the magical substance we now know as chocolate, and of the passions and obsessions it has inspired from its earliest days. Our hero later discovers that his lover had secretly added the elixir to life to his chocolate drink. This allows him to travel through history: to Paris during the time of the Revolution, to Vienna in the nineteenth century, to late Victorian England, and to Hershey Pennsylvania -- accompanied all the while by his trusty greyhound, Pedro. unable to die, he searches to recapture the magic of Ignacia's chocolate -- and to learn to love life just as fully. Playful and intelligent, this is a romantic story about love and loss inspired by a very enchanting substance.
Le Carré's Panama—the young country of 2.5 million souls which, on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal—is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption.Seldom has the weight of global politics descended so heavily on such a tiny and unprepared nation. And seldom has the hidden eye of British Intelligence selected such an unlikely champion as Harry Pendel—a charmer, a dreamer, an evader, a fabulist and presiding genius of the house of Pendel & Braithwaite Co. Limitada, Tailors to Royalty, formerly of London and presently of Panama City.Yet there is a logic to the spies' choice. Everybody who is anybody in Central America passes through Pendel's doors. He dresses politicos and crooks and conmen. His fitting room hears more confidences than a priest's confessional. And when Harry Pendel doesn't hear things as such—well, he hears them anyway, by other means.For what is a tailor for, if not to disduise reality with appearance? What is truth if not the plaything of the artist? And what are spies and politicians and journalists if not themselves selectors and manipulators of the truth for their own ends?In a thrilling, hilarious novel, le Carré has provided us with a satire about the fate of truth in modern times. Once again, he has effortlessly expanded the borders of the spy story to bring us a magnificent entertainment straight out of the pages of tomorrow's history.JOHN LE CARRÉ was born in 1931. After attending the universities of Bern and Oxford, he taught at Eton and spent five years in the British Foreign Service. His third novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was solidified by the acclaim for his trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. His mostly autobiographical novel, A Perfect Spy, wa followed by The Russia House, The Night Manager and Our Game. The Tailor of Panama is his sixteenth novel.John le Carré lives in Cornwall, England.
Als een man de fantastische familiegschiedenis zoals zijn grootvader die vertelde op waarheidsgehalte toetst, ontdekt hij dat de werkelijkheid nog schokkender is.