The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life

Author: John le Carré

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $22.99 AUD
  • : 9780241976890
  • : Penguin UK
  • : Penguin (General UK)
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  • : 0.328
  • : April 2017
  • : 198mm X 129mm
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  • : 22.99
  • : May 2017
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : John le CarrĂ©
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  • : Paperback
  • : 1
  • :
  • : English
  • : 823.914
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  • :
  • : 352
  • : BGL
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Barcode 9780241976890
9780241976890

Description

"Recounted with the storytelling lan of a master raconteur -- by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times   The New York Times bestselling memoir from John le Carr , the legendary author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; and The Night Manager, now an Emmy-nominated television series starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. John le Carr 's new novel, A Legacy of Spies, is now available.   From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carr has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carr is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth; visiting Rwanda's museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide; celebrating New Year's Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command; interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev; listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov; meeting with two former heads of the KGB; watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People; or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le Carr endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.   Best of all, le Carr gives us a glimpse of a writer's journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.

Reviews

Fascinating, important, pithy. Anyone interested in le Carre and his significant contribution to the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries will want to read these engaging meanderings through his life and career.He has plenty to say about Kim Philby, the movie business, fellow spooks and Russian defectors, encounters with the great and good, and his intrepid travels to research his novels -- William Boyd Guardian Vintage le Carre ... [he] remains a magician of plot and counter-plot, a master storyteller Observer John le Carre is as recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen Financial Times When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carre ... they were a journey into the wider world ... These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind Aung San Suu Kyi No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times Guardian A smashing read -- Richard Davenport-Hines Wall Street Journal Offers thrills of recognition as le Carre's archetypes spring to life... The 84-year old novelist discards extended narrative and writes in elegiac fragments with linking harmonies, like the late works of that other German Romantic, Beethoven -- John Gapper Financial Times Exceptionally well-turned and enjoyable -- David Sexton Evening Standard Grippingly written, it is revealing in ways the author never intended it to be Sunday Telegraph Cagey, clever, revealing Daily Telegraph le Carre is a master of the art... fascinatingly readable The Times Frank and fascinating Daily Express The Pigeon Tunnel is a delight... a collection of highly polishes oddments from a life, assembled to entertain and inform...fabulously funny Radio Times A snapshot of a story that is, truly, as extraordinary as any of his fiction Daily Mail For me The Pigeon Tunnel just confirms the enigma... extremely humorous... at no point do I feel that I knew one tiny bit more than he wants me to know -- Susanne Bier, director of The Night Manager He has written an uproarious, darkly poignant and precious book -- James Naughtie New Statesman A beautiful book. The great glory of it is it comes close to unlocking the central mystery of le Carre -- Tony Parsons As enthralling as his fiction Woman and Home Le Carre is such a good writer ... Though urbane and detached, there is rage simmering not far below the surface of both le Carre and his new book. But then, nothing, absolutely nothing, is what it seems Daily Mail A deeply personal and touching account of le Carre's life ... it has undeniable power Prospect Explosive Daily Mail le Carre's The Pigeon Tunnel is exquisite -- Hugh Laurie I savoured the gravelly, quietly insistent voice of a master storyteller examining his own life -- Michela Wrong The Spectator the entertaining recollections of a raconteur -- Neil McCormick Telegraph Elusive and frank and witty by turns, the spy master gives away just as much of himself as he wants to in The Pigeon Tunnel, tracing the story of his life through his walk-on parts in the history and mythology of the cold war, and the shape-shifting discipline of his imagination -- Tim Adams Guardian Biographies of the Year

Author description

John le Carre was born in 1931. 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. His recent novels include A Most Wanted Man, Our Kind of Traitor and A Delicate Truth.