After the Berlin Wall came down and opened up new changes in
eastern Europe, John le Carre's stunning novel, The Secret Pilgrim,
takes us behind the scenes into the former Cold War world.
Nothing is as it was. Old enemies embrace.
The dark staging grounds of the Cold War, whose shadows barely
obscured the endless games of espionage, are flooded with light;
the rules are rewritten, the stakes changed, the future
unfathomable. John le Carre has seized this momentous turning point
in history to give us the most disturbing experience we have yet
had of the frail and brutal world of spydom.
The man called Ned speaks to us. All his
adult life he has been in British Intelligence--the Circus--a
loyal, shrewd, wily officer of the Cold War. Now, approaching the
end of his career, he revisits his own past. He invites us on a
tour of his three decades in the Circus, burrowing deep into the
twilight world where he ran spies--'joes'--from Poland, Estonia,
Hungary.