A Perfect Spy
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: bomc
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In the shadowy world of Cold War intelligence, A Perfect Spy stands as John le Carré's most searingly autobiographical work — a masterful unraveling of identity, betrayal, and the lies men tell themselves to survive. The novel chronicles Magnus Pym, a senior British intelligence officer who vanishes without warning, triggering a desperate manhunt by both his own service and the CIA, while Pym himself retreats into solitude to write a confession addressed to his young son — a document that traces his life from a childhood shadowed by his charismatic, larger-than-life con-man father, Rick Pym, through his recruitment into the espionage world and his slow, inexorable double life as a traitor. Le Carré argues, with devastating psychological precision, that duplicity is not merely a professional skill for Pym but an existential condition — the inevitable inheritance of a boy raised on charm, deception, and the art of becoming whatever the audience demands. The novel operates simultaneously as a gripping spy thriller and a profound literary study of the self, drawing on le Carré's own complex relationship with his father to produce what many critics consider the finest British spy novel ever written. Rich in moral ambiguity and rendered in prose of extraordinary suppleness, A Perfect Spy leaves the reader to reckon with an unsettling question: can a man who has never been real to himself ever truly betray anyone at all?
Author: John Le Carré
Format: Hardback
Published: 1986, Alfred A. Knopf
Genre: Cold war & espionage
Edition: bomc
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In the shadowy world of Cold War intelligence, A Perfect Spy stands as John le Carré's most searingly autobiographical work — a masterful unraveling of identity, betrayal, and the lies men tell themselves to survive. The novel chronicles Magnus Pym, a senior British intelligence officer who vanishes without warning, triggering a desperate manhunt by both his own service and the CIA, while Pym himself retreats into solitude to write a confession addressed to his young son — a document that traces his life from a childhood shadowed by his charismatic, larger-than-life con-man father, Rick Pym, through his recruitment into the espionage world and his slow, inexorable double life as a traitor. Le Carré argues, with devastating psychological precision, that duplicity is not merely a professional skill for Pym but an existential condition — the inevitable inheritance of a boy raised on charm, deception, and the art of becoming whatever the audience demands. The novel operates simultaneously as a gripping spy thriller and a profound literary study of the self, drawing on le Carré's own complex relationship with his father to produce what many critics consider the finest British spy novel ever written. Rich in moral ambiguity and rendered in prose of extraordinary suppleness, A Perfect Spy leaves the reader to reckon with an unsettling question: can a man who has never been real to himself ever truly betray anyone at all?