The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre

When I embarked on the challenge of reading all eight ‘Smiley’ novels by John le Carre, I wasn’t aware that I’d be reading The Spy who Came in from the Cold fifty years after it was written. The Cold War may now be part of modern history, different kinds of conflict now dominate the newspapers and the internet. Nevertheless, the grim, gritty battles that we associate with espionage are probably continuing, and not necessarily with entirely new protagonists. Although it is beautifully written, this is a dark novel, pregnant with gloom and foreboding. Yes, it is a psychological battle between Leamus and Fiedler and Mundt but they are proxies for the dirty war between East and West, between the ideologies of communism and capitalism. I was in Berlin in 1961 shortly after the Wall appeared and was even taken through Checkpoint Charlie to visit the outrageously opulent Soviet War Memorial, it was the only opulent thing in the Eastern Sector at that time or so it seemed to me. Everything else was a uniform grey, and this greyness seems to pervade the novel, everything that happens seems to happen in the shadows, light is at a premium except at the very end when massive arc lights illuminate Leamas’ final coming in from the cold. A masterpiece of the thriller genre and a must read for those who wish to engage with Europe in the 1960s.