The Looking Glass War: A George Smiley Novel (George Smiley Novels Book 4)

I have always heard that John le Carre is the preeminent spy writer, that he came from that world and is also a serious writer. I cannot vouch for the authenticity in THE LOOKING GLASS WAR but I can confirm this book is more than “just” a spy story.The setting of the story is post-World War II, but near the beginning of the Cold War. The plot involves a division of British Intelligence attempting to place an agent in East Germany to investigate rumors of a possible missile installation. It is interesting to see the planning and execution, which is definitely World War II era “old school” rather than James Bond high-tech.This is part of the “real story” that LeCarre is telling because the agency in charge of the operation is small and manned primarily by veterans of World War II, when they conducted similar operations against Hitler. Since the war, history seems to have passed them by with new equipment, new techniques, and younger men. They are almost forgotten by the British overseas intelligence agency referred to as “the Circus.”Le Carre describes these men without emotion, but the reader almost winces at the way they try to recapture past glories and succeed only in fooling themselves.Adding another level of meaning is the way le Carre shows the rigid class structure of England. Those running the show are all “gentlemen” while Leiser, the agent they recruit is lower class, a Polish national living in England. They see themselves as naturally superior: “They saw that the Department had provided direction for his energy: like a man of uncommon sexual appetite, Leiser had found in his new employment a love which he could illustrate with his gifts. They saw that he took pleasure in their command, giving in return his strength as homage for fulfilment. They even knew perhaps that between them they constituted for Leiser the poles of absolute authority: the one by his bitter adherence to standards which Leiser could never achieve, the other by his youthful accessibility, the apparent sweetness and dependence of his nature.”This leads to the third level of meaning. As le Carre describes the men, it is almost as if they have lovers’ relationships that are deeper than with their women. Even the wife of one of the team notices: “When you came back earlier in the evening you looked as though you’d fallen in love. The kind of love that gives you comfort. You looked free and at peace. I thought for a moment you’d found a woman. That’s why I asked, really it is, whether they were all men . . . I thought you were in love.”A spy story? Yes. But also a fine novel.

As Le Carre states in his 1991 introduction to the Looking Glass War, this is a "sad book."It's filled with grim, unhappy characters who are frustrated and plodding through a fuzzy, cold world. It is no wonder this book was not so well received initially!The author warns us (27 years after publishing it!) that his intent was to turn his back on the noble, heroic spy model and to show an opposite view from the exciting, meaningful world he presented in his earlier novel. He succeeds, but frankly it is not very enjoyable reading.This is the most labored and dense Le Carre book and it keeps hitting the reader over the head with a gloomy theme from as many perspectives as is possible. Even his nominal use of Smiley has an uncharacteristic bitter tint to it. (But actually, Smiley still has not hit center stage in either of these two first novels . . .It's a bit of disingenuous marketing to call this a "Smiley novel.")All that said, Le Carre can't help himself and every now and then he lets some positive rays of light slip into the narrative -both in some action sequences and in small bits of character interactions/development. Those times are enjoyable reading!If you like Le Carre books, you'll probably want to read this book as well --at least so you don't miss anything... [but] if you skipped this book you might be a happier person ;-)

Did you have to put a sticker on the cover to show your business name? Removing your pathetic sticker also removes a layer of the cover, a useless addition when buying a book.

Even Le Carre had his doubts about this one. In order to be fair to the book, it deserves, if not demands, a second reading. I have just completed my second read and am damned glad I took the time. These pages practically suck you in. This is not a novel about plot --spy vs spy-- as we might normally think of such. For one thing it is a novel about character. One is tempted to ask Quora why Haldane is so unlikable.We learn something about the business here, but we learn a lot more about people, personalities, characters and ourselves. While reading it I was thinking back to how Valerie Plame was outed. For her unknowing neighours, until she was outed, she was the spy next door. This novel applies to nay of us wo have worked in organizations, corporations, warring and feuding departments. And it makes one think about decisions one has had to make or ones that one is making or will be making in our lives.Most corporate circumstances, no less than the CIA, the FBI, MI5 or MI6, are intense, exhausting, filled with training, budgets, permissions to get, projects failed or cancelled. People find themselves in disturbing and difficult circumstances. Even as the word "security" is uppermost in our minds today, we have never been so insecure as a society and civilization.Even though we are allegedly "on the same team" and "on the same side," the daily battle of internecine warfare continues. A various points and times, we are all victors, we are all victims, we are all heroes, we are all losers. No one gets out of our world alive.

I rediscovered John Le Carre after masny years and am enjpying his writing even more than last time (many years ago)

I loved this book. The outcome horribly predictable, but only superficially. In spite of knowing how, technically, it will end, you are carried along by the superb characterisation and the desire to understand what motivates the main characters. How their small drama will play out. The novel depicts a world of sociopathic careerism, inter departmental jostling, office power play and the ever present danger of moral squalor when you are detached from the outcomes of those whom you send into danger. And yet Le Carre finds the much devalued but nonetheless beautiful humanity at the end, finds it somehow. Giving it a twist of bathos, futility and rage which seems (over the course of his twenty seven books over thirty years), to be all his own.And there is class commentary here, as so often in Le Carre’s novels. There is the horror and sense of abandonment as the faintly obsequious trust the agent had placed in his ‘betters’ is slowly unravelled, until, without them to believe in and thrown back onto his own resources, his own morality and his own moral injury, he rises from the devaluation and abandonment of his ‘betters’, to being the quiet hero that he always was, in spite of it all. His ending is utterly damning for his ‘superiors’, as Le Carre always intended it to be.

It is a great book. The whole book is a plot of Circus against the Department. Control and Smiley know the whole time what will happen to Leiser. The whole east gean operation is a trap by Russians. In the end they leave Leiser in East Germany.

Old spies searching for their youth in a forgotten war in and drawing in a young man desperate to be part of a quest. George appears only fleetingly but to a Smiley fan permeates the whole book.

Traumhafter Text, liest sich sehr gut. Wirklich sehr schön und spannend geschrieben. Würde ich wieder kaufen und kann ich weiterempfehlen.