Karla's Choice
A John le Carré Novel
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4.0 • 8 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Instant national bestseller
An extraordinary new novel set in the world of John le Carré's most iconic spy, George Smiley, written by the acclaimed novelist Nick Harkaway
It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West’s spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only for a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumor in Whitehall—unconfirmed and a little scandalous—that George Smiley might almost be happy.
But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Szusanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But, as Smiley well knows, even the softest step in the shadows resounds with terrible danger. Soon, he is back there, in East Berlin, and on the trail of his most devious enemy’s hidden past.
Set in the missing decade between two iconic instalments in the George Smiley saga, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Nick Harkaway’s Karla’s Choice is an extraordinary, thrilling return to the world of spy fiction’s greatest writer, John le Carré.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
George Smiley returns in this terrific spy saga from John Le Carré's son, Titanium Noir author Nicholas Cornwell (writing under the Harkaway pseudonym). In 1963, Hungarian publisher Laszlo Bánáti fails to show up at his office in London. Instead, a Soviet assassin arrives, telling Bánáti's assistant, Susanna Gero, "I am here to kill your Mr. Bánáti... but I have changed my mind." Gero cleverly manages to bring the would-be assassin to British intelligence, who task the happily retired Smiley with finding Bánáti and figuring out why the Soviets want him dead. Smiley plunges behind Soviet lines, launching a labyrinthine mission that puts him back on the trail of his old nemesis, Karla, head of the KGB, and fills in narrative gaps between Le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Longtime Smiley fans will delight in the enormous cast of familiar characters, the thoughtful meditations on the morality of espionage, and the lived-in tradecraft. Harkaway brilliantly channels his late father's voice, and in the process delivers an essential new chapter for Smiley and Karla.
