Alec Leamas is tired. It’s the 1960s, he’s been out in the cold for years, spying in the shadow of the Berlin Wall for his British masters. He has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last – but only after one final assignment. He must travel deep into the heart of Communist Germany and betray his country, a job that he will do with his usual cynical professionalism. But when George Smiley tries to help a young woman Leamas has befriended, Leamas’s mission may prove to be the worst thing he could ever have done. In le Carré’s breakthrough work of 1963, the spy story is reborn as a gritty and terrible tale of men who are caught up in politics beyond their imagining.

‘A portrait of a man who has lived by lies and subterfuge for so long, he’s forgotten how to tell the truth’
TIME

‘He can communicate emotion, from sweating fear to despairing love, with terse and compassionate conviction. Above all, he can tell a tale’
Sunday Times

A mole, implanted by Moscow Centre, has infiltrated the highest ranks of the British Intelligence Service, almost destroying it in the process. And so former spymaster George Smiley has been brought out of retirement in order to hunt down the traitor at the very heart of the Circus – even though it may be one of those closest to him.

The first part of le Carré’s acclaimed Karla Trilogy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy sees the beginning of the stealthy Cold War cat-and-mouse game between the taciturn, dogged Smiley and his wily Soviet counterpart.

‘A great thriller, the best le Carré has written’ Spectator

THE FIFTH GEORGE SMILEY NOVEL

‘Le Carré at his finest’ Mick Herron, Guardian

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.

‘The finest, wisest storyteller’ Richard Osman

‘A towering writer’ Margaret Atwood

‘A literary giant’ Stephen King

In Silverview John le Carré turns his focus to the world that occupied his writing for the past sixty years – the secret world itself.

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 only a couple of months into his new career, Julian’s evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian’s family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise.

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 his inimitable voice John le Carré, the greatest chronicler of our age, seeks to answer the question of what we truly owe to the people we love.

© The Literary Estate of David 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

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.

‘The finest, wisest storyteller’ Richard Osman

‘A towering writer’ Margaret Atwood

‘A literary giant’ Stephen King

Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own story, John le Carré has given us a novel of superb and enduring quality.

When the Department – faded since the war and busy only with bureaucratic battles – hears rumour of a missile base near the West German border, it seems like the perfect opportunity to regain some political standing in the Intelligence market place. The Cold War is at its height and the Department is dying for a piece of the action.

Swiftly becoming carried away by fear and pride, the Department and her officers send deactivated agent Fred Leiser back into East Germany, armed only with some schoolboy training and his memories of the war. In the land of eloquent silence that is Communist East Germany, Leiser’s fate becomes inseparable from the Department’s.

If you enjoyed The Looking Glass War, you might like le Carré’s The Secret Pilgrim, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

‘A devastating and tragic record of human, not glamour, spies’
New York Herald Tribune

‘A book of rare and great power’
Financial Times