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The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
John Le Carré
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Description for The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
Paperback. Num Pages: 352 pages. BIC Classification: BM. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 198 x 129. .
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, ... Read moreJohn 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 of humankind' Aung San Suu Kyi Show Less
Product Details
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days
About John Le Carré
John le Carre 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.
Reviews for The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
Elusive and frank and witty by turns, the spy master gives away just as much of himself as he wants to in The Pigeon Tunnel, tracing the story of his life through his walk-on parts in the history and mythology of the cold war, and the shape-shifting discipline of his imagination
Tim Adams
Guardian Biographies of the Year ... Read more
the entertaining recollections of a raconteur
Neil McCormick
Telegraph
I savoured the gravelly, quietly insistent voice of a master storyteller examining his own life
Michela Wrong
The Spectator
le Carre's The Pigeon Tunnel is exquisite
Hugh Laurie Explosive
Daily Mail
A deeply personal and touching account of le Carre's life ... it has undeniable power
Prospect
Le Carre is such a good writer . . . Though urbane and detached, there is rage simmering not far below the surface of both le Carre and his new book. But then, nothing, absolutely nothing, is what it seems
Daily Mail
As enthralling as his fiction
Woman and Home
A beautiful book. The great glory of it is it comes close to unlocking the central mystery of le Carre
Tony Parsons He has written an uproarious, darkly poignant and precious book
James Naughtie
New Statesman
For me The Pigeon Tunnel just confirms the enigma... extremely humorous... at no point do I feel that I knew one tiny bit more than he wants me to know
Susanne Bier, director of The Night Manager A snapshot of a story that is, truly, as extraordinary as any of his fiction
Daily Mail
The Pigeon Tunnel is a delight... a collection of highly polishes oddments from a life, assembled to entertain and inform...fabulously funny
Radio Times
Frank and fascinating
Daily Express
le Carre is a master of the art... fascinatingly readable
The Times
Cagey, clever, revealing
Daily Telegraph
Grippingly written, it is revealing in ways the author never intended it to be
Sunday Telegraph
Exceptionally well-turned and enjoyable
David Sexton
Evening Standard
Offers thrills of recognition as le Carre'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
A smashing read
Richard Davenport-Hines
Wall Street Journal
No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times
Guardian
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 of humankind
Aung San Suu Kyi
John le Carre is as recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen
Financial Times
Vintage le Carre ... [he] remains a magician of plot and counter-plot, a master storyteller
Observer
Fascinating, important, pithy. Anyone interested in le Carre 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
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