Review of Le Carre’s Our Kind of Traitor

The end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War helped usher in a new age of neoliberal ‘reform’ which has led, among other things, to the looting of the Russian state and the creation of a new class of mega-rich mafia-connected asset strippers. Their principal concern has been to shore up their domestic power base and then export as many assets overseas as possible so they can live a life of luxurious expat indulgence. One such, in John Le Carre’s latest and characteristically intelligent and elegant novel, is Dima – a former zek (prison camp criminal) and vor (one who abides by the gangster code of honour).

Read the full review here.

Review of A Most Wanted Man

In the post-Cold War world, John Le Carré’s fiction has generally focused on a combination of the inequities visited on the vulnerable of the world, which can no longer be excused even by the weasel excuses of ideological conviction, together with the moral ambiguities facing those brought into the action more or less against their will. Generally, willing protagonists are the true believers, in one way or another, whose actions cause the problems that afflict the lives of those who are left behind them or who merely have the misfortune to get in the way.

Read the full review here.

Review of The Russia House

A new generation of spies has taken over from the time of George Smiley and the Circus. Times have changed too, as the Cousins, who were once well-resourced allies at approximately the same level of ability, now bankroll all espionage operations–the Americans now routinely receive all intelligence discovered by the British services while occasionally and perhaps begrudgingly considering whether to release some needful titbit from time to time. Yet there remain times when a person on the spot can circumvent all the technology and resources that can be thrown at an operation: so, when a Russian publisher is looking to pass on a secret manuscript from a friend to a western contact who is not available, she gives it to a substitute whom she is obliged to trust in the hope that he will prove to be a good and faithful person.

Read the full review here.