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Chargement... Smiley's people (original 1979; édition 1980)par John Le Carré
Information sur l'oeuvreLes Gens de Smiley par John le Carré (1979)
Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. After the jet-setting of The Honourable Schoolboy, this is a return to classic Smiley territory. London, Berlin, and other parts of Europe. If you like Smiley (as I do) then this book is great. You feel his frustrations, you are in awe of his tenacity, his methodical weaving of the story, you understand his existential crises, overridden by his sense of duty. The story is similar in many ways to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, though much more straight-forward, and then, ultimately, perhaps not quite as satisfying. While TTSS is bamboozling in its complexities, in the end this feels like it comes a bit too easy. It is a suitable and satisfying conclusion to the Karla trilogy, but, although I did not feel this during the reading of it, in retrospect it is perhaps a little anticlimactic as a story in its own right. I was first introduced to the novels of John Le Carre by my husband. I don't normally read espionage novels so the genre had no particular attraction for me. However, Le Carre's writing is so exceptional, his story telling so compelling and his characters so vivid that I think categorising his books as spy novels does them a great disservice. This book, follows a retired George Smiley as he investigates the death of a former source in mysterious circumstances and uncovers an important conspiracy in which to achieve his ends Smiley is forced to use the tactics of his nemesis, the shadowy Karla head of Russia's thirteenth directorate. The book is set at a gentle pace, one could argue at Smiley's pace, but that only adds to it's charm. If you are looking for a pacy thriller then I don't think this is the book for you. I would however recommend it to lovers of literary fiction who appreciate detail and description. En rysk emigrant blir överfallen på öppen gata i Paris. En estnisk kurir reser på farligt uppdrag i Hamburg. En före detta agent mördas i en park i England. Och George Smiley - hjärnan i den brittiska underrättelsetjänsten, också kallad Cirkusen - återvänder in på scenen. Hans uppdrag: att begrava fallet, inte att lösa det. Hans dilemma: att identifiera de skuggor som manas fram ur det förflutna. Hans vapen: de egenskaper som gjort honom till den skickligaste i underrättelsetjänsten. Hans utmaning: att möta sin ärkefiende, den sovjetiske mästerspionen Karla, i en sista avgörande duell. Med sedvanlig suveränitet beskriver John Le Carré det intrikata spelet på liv och död i underrättelsetjänstens hemliga och labyrintlika värld, där det kan vara svårt att skilja på vänner och motståndare, på vinnare och förlorare. Det är en värld där kriget under ytan ständigt pågår, ett kallt krig som kräver okända offer och ofta förs på omänskliga villkor.
In "Smiley's People," Smiley works both worlds, is both detective and agent at risk. I won"t disclose the oblique, slow-moving plot, except to say that a trail of murder and camouflage leads Smiley to Hamburg and Paris and Berne, and that the stakes are especially high for him, since his old archenemy, the daunting mastermind in charge of the Thirteenth Directorate of Russian Intelligence, appears to have made an uncharacteristic slip. Smiley's boss in London jokingly refers to Holmes and Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, but even Smiley himself hears "the drum-beat of his own past, summoning him to one last effort to externalise and resolve the conflict he had lived by." That's a touch too literary, sounding more like le Carré's problem than Smiley's, and Smiley's next image catches a little more of the case: "It was just possible, against all the odds, that he had been given, in late age, a chance to return to the rained-out contests of his life and play them after all." The story’s progress is funereal, and there are times when Smiley appears to have lost not his marbles but his memory. Some of the narrative involves Smiley digging to unearth bits of the past that we know already (as in the long, long revelations of a messenger’s activities), and we see him prompting the memory of others with information that he apparently already knows. In a talk with Connie Sachs — we have met her in other books - Smiley induces her to emember things about Karla and the girl. ‘And the child? There was a defector report - what was that about?’ If Smiley knows so much about the defector report, and indeed about most of what Connie has to tell him, what is the point of asking her questions? Est contenu dansFait l'objet d'une adaptation dansPrix et récompensesDistinctionsListes notables
Fiction.
Thriller.
Featuring George Smiley, this New York Times bestseller is the third and final installment in the Karla Trilogy, from the author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold Tell Max that it concerns the Sandman. A very junior agent answers Vladimir's call, but it could have been the Chief of the Circus himself. No one at the British Secret Service considers the old spy to be anything except a senile has-been who can't give up the game-until he's shot in the face at point-blank range. Although George Smiley (code name: Max) is officially retired, he's summoned to identify the body now bearing Moscow Centre's bloody imprimatur. As he works to unearth his friend's fatal secrets, Smiley heads inexorably toward one final reckoning with Karla-his dark "grail." In Smiley's People, master storyteller and New York Times bestselling author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Our Kind of Traitor John le CarrE brings his acclaimed Karla Trilogy, to its unforgettable, spellbinding conclusion. With an introduction by the author. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Smiley’s People is the classic Cold War espionage novel. A Russian emigre is accosted on the streets of Paris by a Soviet intelligence officer as we slowly begin to learn more of her story when she seeks help from a well-placed contact, there is a young Estonian boy thrown into the world of espionage without the proper training as he attempts to be courier in Hamburg, and George Smiley is summoned in the dead of night in London to a grisly murder scene of a retired agent. He is briefed to bury the crime, not to solve it but Smiley becomes haunted by a cast of many ghosts from the past. There is mounting revelation and suspense as we race from Switzerland, Hamburg, Paris and Berlin. John le Carre is the master of espionage with his wealth of books. I am looking forward to reading the last two books in the Smiley’s People series. ( )