The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Book Name : The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
Author : John Le Carre

What is it about : Our protagonist, Alec Leamas, once the head of operations inside walled Berlin at the height of the Cold War, now down and out, drunk and poor, ever since his team was entirely annihilated by Mundt, the ruthless strong man of the East German Intelligence unit. Alec was subsequently recruited by the East Germans in order to gain more intimate knowledge of the British operations; as layers upon layers of planted information peeled back to reveal a high-level mole buried deep inside the East German hierarchy and thus gave rise to a thrilling showdown between the spy masters. Would Alec get out of the walled city alive ? Who's actually the mole ? The readers would not know the true victim of this triple-cross plot till the very end.

Some thoughts after having read the book : The book which made the author one of the top notch writer in this field of brutal and subtle espionage tales. Of course, Le Carre went on to achieve even greater fame through his trilogy of Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy. In my opinion, no other authors in this genre could bring the sheer depth and intensity, the understanding of human frailty, the subtlety of manipulation, duplicity and deceit in the world of spy-craft into words that filled a book. This was the second time I had read this book, last time being in year 2,000 ! and I was amazed in how I had almost remembered the plot and yet found more hidden meaning and implications this second time around. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this re-finding of facts being echoed in the Forward written by another author.

Would I recommend this book to you : Actually the book would be a great example lesson of "How To Write" as each section was headed by the title, often just one word or a few words and thus the structure of the whole book was sketched out and Voilà ! all one needed was the talent to fill in the contents. I would definitely recommend this book for those looking for more than just a plain vanilla spy thriller - the human psychology, depth, atmosphere and audacity of the plot in this book would stir you !