Silverview

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Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the City for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But after only a couple of months into his new career, Edward, a Polish émigré, shows up at his door with a very keen interest in Julian's new enterprise and a lot of knowledge about his family history. And when a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea . . .

Silverview is the mesmerising story of an encounter between innocence and experience and between public duty and private morals. In this last complete masterwork from the greatest chronicler of our age, John le Carré asks what you owe to your country when you no longer recognise it.

Valedictory, with a final turn of events that ends surprisingly but pleasingly in a cock-up, this is a satisfying coda to the career of the finest thriller writer of the 20th century
Guardian, Books of the Year

About John le Carré

John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the University of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5 & 6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020. His posthumous novel, Silverview, was published in 2021.

Details

Imprint: Penguin
Published: 28/04/2022
ISBN: 9780241994535
Length: 272 pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 20mm x 129mm
Weight: 240g
Price: £9.99

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Silverview

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Valedictory, with a final turn of events that ends surprisingly but pleasingly in a cock-up, this is a satisfying coda to the career of the finest thriller writer of the 20th century

A compelling character study of a supposedly retired spy . . . Such was his rare command of language and unique understanding of how the world really works that I finished the book with a sense that the only real grown-up in the room had left

As graceful an exit as we could hope for, the old master remaining at the top of his game to the last

Nothing will ever match the Cold War spy novels written in his prime, but his later work illuminates themes of loyalty, betrayal and conflicting values in a modern context

A superb example of le Carré's enduring and exquisite genius

Gripping and involving, an elegant farewell by a much missed writer

Silverview has many of le Carré's characteristic virtues . . . engaging characters and three or four splendid set scenes in which veteran spooks stir the embers of old fires

Silverview is a cat-and-mouse chase from an East Anglian seaside town to the Eastern Bloc. Published ten months after he passed away, it marks a fitting final work by the master of spy fiction

A taut, thrilling spy novel. Read it as a tribute to a master

Silverview has all the old magic . . . it offers a rewarding post-script to the long-distance spell-binders The Little Drummer Girl and Absolute Friends

About John le Carré

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