The Pigeon Tunnel (stories From My Life)

By (author) le Carré, John
Description

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING MEMOIR OF SPY-WRITING LEGEND JOHN LE CARRÉ

''As recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen'' Financial Times

From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War to a career as a writer, John le Carré has lived a unique life.

In this, his first memoir, le Carré 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 interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison or watching Alec Guinness preparing for his role as George Smiley, this book invites us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.

Best of all, le Carré 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.

''No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times'' Guardian

''When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré . . . These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind'' Aung San Suu Kyi

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Fascinating, important, pithy. Anyone interested in le Carré 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
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Vintage le Carré ... [he] remains a magician of plot and counter-plot, a master storyteller
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John le Carré is as recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen
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When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré ... 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
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No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times
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A smashing read
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Offers thrills of recognition as le Carré''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
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Exceptionally well-turned and enjoyable
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Grippingly written, it is revealing in ways the author never intended it to be
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Cagey, clever, revealing
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le Carré is a master of the art... fascinatingly readable
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Frank and fascinating
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The Pigeon Tunnel is a delight... a collection of highly polishes oddments from a life, assembled to entertain and inform...fabulously funny
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A snapshot of a story that is, truly, as extraordinary as any of his fiction
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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
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He has written an uproarious, darkly poignant and precious book
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A beautiful book. The great glory of it is it comes close to unlocking the central mystery of le Carré
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As enthrall