The Secret Pilgrim
A Novel
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4.4 • 54 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The acclaimed novel featuring George Smiley, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Legacy of Spies and The Night Manager, now an AMC miniseries
The rules of the game, and of the world, have changed. Old enemies now yield to glasnost and perestroika. The killing shadows of the Cold War are flooded with light. The future is unfathomable.
To train new spies for this uncertain future, one must show them the past. Enter the man called Ned, the loyal and shrewd veteran of the Circus. With the inspiration of his inscrutable mentor George Smiley, Ned thrills all as he recounts forty exhilarating years of Cold War espionage across Europe and the Far East—an electrifying, clandestine tour of honorable old knights and notorious traitors, triumph and failure, passion and hate, suspicion, sudden death, and old secrets that haunt us still.
Praise for The Secret Pilgrim
“Intriguing . . . magisterial . . . The many ingredients are skillfully marshaled. . . . Lucidly and elegantly controlled.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Scorching . . . fascinating . . . seductive . . . a dazzler.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Powerful . . . a highly absorbing tale.”—Newsday
“Extraordinary.”—USA Today
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fang Lizhi, China's leading dissident intellectual, now in exile in England, lays down a gauntlet to the world's leaders: ``Appeasement of governments which revel in slaughter is an invitation to world-wide catastrophe.'' In this collection of plainspoken articles, fiery speeches, informal travel notes, scientific essays and interviews, the astrophysicist/human rights activist fully lives up to his reputation as ``China's Sakharov.'' Equally conversant with Western traditions and his own, this slightly owlish-looking freethinker strives to put China's problems within a global perspective. His critique of Deng's modernization drive--he stresses that China needs to import a new value system, not just foreign capital and technology--grows ever more timely. Within his own field, cosmologist Fang was branded a criminal for writing about the Big Bang. Here he goes even further, questioning the orthodoxy of Einsteinian space-time. These subtle, brilliant writings convey a powerful message of hope.
Customer Reviews
Smiley’s Farewell but Maybe Not
I was not sure I’d love this le Carre book featuring George Smiley but I absolutely did. I thought it might read like a short story book, which would have been fine, but I’d gotten used to le Carre’s sweeping novels and I thought shorter stories might lack something. Plus each le Carre book takes some initial work to figure out what’s going on and I worried if each story was like that it might be a bit much. But le Carre ties together brilliantly these relatively stand alone stories, with the very clever help of George Smiley. And each is gorgeous — exciting, suspenseful, morally grounded. What a great book.