Agent Running in the Field: A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick

Le Carré, John

ISBN 10: 024140293X ISBN 13: 9780241402931

Publisher: Viking, 2019

Synopsis

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Agent Running in the Field written and read by John le Carré.

Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie.

Nat is not only a spy, he is a passionate badminton player. His regular Monday evening opponent is half his age: the introspective and solitary Ed. Ed hates Brexit, hates Trump and hates his job at some soulless media agency. And it is Ed, of all unlikely people, who will take Prue, Florence and Nat himself down the path of political anger that will ensnare them all. Agent Running in the Field is a chilling portrait of our time, now heartbreaking, now darkly humorous, told to us with unflagging tension by the greatest chronicler of our age.
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'No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times' Guardian

'John le Carré is as recognisable a writer as Dickens or Austen' Financial Times

'No writer has ever been better at turning the act of two people talking politely to each other across a desk into a blood sport' Telegraph

About this title

About the Author

John le Carré (Author, Reader)
John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the University of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5 & 6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020. His posthumous novel, Silverview, was published in 2021.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 024140293X
• ISBN 13: 9780241402931
• Binding: Audio CD
• Number of pages: 1