Agent Running in the Field

Category: Book
By (author): Le CarrÉ, John
Subject:  FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General
  FICTION / Mystery & Detective / International Mystery & Crime
  FICTION / Thrillers / Espionage
  FICTION / Thrillers / Political
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: October 2021
Format: Book-paperback
Pages: 336
Size: 7.50in x 4.18in
Our Price:
$ 11.99
Availability:
In stock

Additional Notes

From The Publisher*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER and NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The last novel from the incomparable John le Carré.


Nat, a forty-seven-year-old veteran of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, thinks his years as an agent runner are over. He's back in London with his long-suffering wife, Prue, but MI6 has other plans. To tackle the growing threat from Moscow Centre, Nat is put in charge of The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. 
     Nat's weekly badminton session with the young, introspective, Brexit-hating Ed offers respite from the new job. And it is Ed, of all unlikely people, who will take Nat and his team 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.
Review Quote*Longlisted for The Guardian's "Not the Booker Prize"
A Zoomer book club pick
One of The Sunday Times' (UK) "picks of the best paperbacks"

Praise for Agent Running in the Field:

"This morally murky world of spying is where le Carré continues to make his literary mark . . . Agent taps into the disillusionment of aging spies who turn their backs on the British establishment after years of loyal service because the cause they once espoused has gone."
-The New York Times

"Agent Running in the Field mirrors readers' anxiety over the state of the world . . . [Carré's] lost none of his master's touch."
-Toronto Star

"[A] thriller laced with Brexit fury . . . The master of the spy genre takes aim at Brexit and Trump in a classy entertainment about political ideals and deception . . . There is the sense of a master enjoying himself hugely: the characters themselves seem to become cleverer and wittier as their puppeteer's dialogic invention takes flight."
-The Guardian

"Intricate, exciting and appalling believable, Agent Running in the Field turns on questions both moral and political."
-Maclean's

"Le Carré is one of the best novelists-of any kind-we have."
-Vanity Fair

"Le Carré remains a master at showing us what spies do, wily spiders to the unsuspecting flies they entrap."
-Booklist (starred)

"[Agent Running in the field is] a tragicomic salute to both the recuperative powers of its has-been hero and the remarkable career of its nonpareil author."
-Kirkus Reviews

"John le Carré is the great master of the spy story . . . The constant flow of emotion lifts him not only above all modern suspense novelists, but above most novelists now practicing."
-Financial Times

"One of our great writers of moral ambiguity, a tireless explorer of that darkly contradictory no-man's land."
-Los Angeles Times

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

"In his plot and characterization, le Carré is as thrilling as ever and in the way he writes about our times he proves himself, once again, to be the greatest chronicler of our age."
-The Seminary Co-op Bookstore

"[Agent Running in the Field] is more politically nuanced than some of his books, in other ways it's identikit le Carré . . . As always, it is a sheer pleasure to read le Carré's muscular prose. Few writers are so well able to convey strength and self-belief, with the result that the reader is forced to accept everything he says, sometimes against one's better judgment . . . What's most remarkable is the way in which le Carré can still produce set-pieces of a type that he more or less invented fifty years ago and, at the age of 87, do them better than his scores of imitators."
-The Telegraph (starred review)

"A perfectly tight thriller . . ."
-The Sunday Times (UK)

"At age 88, Le Carré is still on top of his literary game with [Agent Running in the Field]. . ."
-Zoomer, "5 Binge-Worthy Books Set in the UK"
Biographical NoteJOHN 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 SpyThe 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 December 12, 2020.