The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life - Softcover

Carré, John Le

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241976898 ISBN 13: 9780241976890

Publisher: Penguin, 2017

Synopsis

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER'Out of the secret world I once knew, I have tried to make a theatre for the larger worlds we inhabit. First comes the imagining, then the search for reality. Then back to the imagining, and to the desk where I'm sitting now.' From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion, to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, John le Carre has always written from the heart of modern times., In this, his first memoir, le Carre is as funny as he is incisive - reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire, or visiting Rwanda's museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide, or celebrating New Year's Eve with Yasser Arafat, or interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev, or watching Alec Guinness preparing for his role as George Smiley, or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in his The Constant Gardener, le Carre endows each happening with vividness and humour, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood. Best of all, le Carre gives us a glimpse of a writer's journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.'No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times' Guardian'John le Carre is as recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen' Financial Times'When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carre ..., they were a journey into the wider world ... These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest

About this title

Review:

Fascinating, important, pithy. Anyone interested in le Carré and his significant contribution to the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries will want to read these engaging meanderings through his life and career.He has plenty to say about Kim Philby, the movie business, fellow spooks and Russian defectors, encounters with the great and good, and his intrepid travels to research his novels (William Boyd Guardian)

Vintage le Carré ... [he] remains a magician of plot and counter-plot, a master storyteller (Observer)

John le Carré is as recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen (Financial Times)

When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré ... they were a journey into the wider world ... These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind (Aung San Suu Kyi)

No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times (Guardian)

A smashing read (Richard Davenport-Hines Wall Street Journal)

Offers thrills of recognition as le Carré's archetypes spring to life... The 84-year old novelist discards extended narrative and writes in elegiac fragments with linking harmonies, like the late works of that other German Romantic, Beethoven (John Gapper Financial Times)

Exceptionally well-turned and enjoyable (David Sexton Evening Standard)

Grippingly written, it is revealing in ways the author never intended it to be (Sunday Telegraph)

Cagey, clever, revealing (Daily Telegraph)

About the Author:

John le Carré was born in 1931 and attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. He taught at Eton and served briefly in British Intelligence during the Cold War. For more than fifty years he has lived by his pen. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0241976898
• ISBN 13: 9780241976890
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352