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The Looking Glass War

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The Looking Glass War

By: John le Carré
Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE FOURTH GEORGE SMILEY NOVEL

When the Department - faded since the war and busy only with bureaucratic battles - hears rumours of a missile base near the West German border, it seems the perfect opportunity to regain some standing in the Intelligence world. Desperate for glory and determined to outdo their rivals at the Circus, including George Smiley, they send deactivated agent Fred Leiser back into East Germany, armed only with some schoolboy training and his memories of the war. In the land of eloquent silence that is Communist East Germany, Leiser's fate is no longer his own.

Showing men carried away by fear and pride, The Looking Glass War is a powerful, moving story of human frailty.

'A devastating and tragic record of human, not glamour, spies' New York Herald Tribune

'A book of rare and great power' Financial Times

©1965 le Carré Productions (P)2025 Penguin Audio Classics Espionage Mystery Political Spies & Politics Suspense Thriller & Suspense War
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Le Carré’s brilliant writing sadly spoiled in this audio edition by the strangely but consistently sneering, contemptuous tone of the narration. Difficult to understand why it’s been done like that; comes across as an unfortunate misinterpretation.

Classic le Carré spoiled by narration

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Excellent stuff and narration. A story of ‘Old Boys’ of the establishment hanging onto their glorious days during WW2 and failing miserably. Upper class twits playing - as usual - with peoples lives resulting in abysmally failure which Le Carre portrays brilliantly. I really enjoyed this, at times, depressing, novel which I believe is up there with TTSS and TSWCIFTC. Smiley makes a minimal appearance.

The Looking Glass War

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Compelling, if slow moving and deliberate, keeping up a multilayered tension that held me to the story. Many interesting classic Le Carré themes, so enjoyed that aspect, too. Also a documentation of the times. Notably, the casual misogyny and snobbery exhibited by some of the characters was rather shocking (although believable). One small difficulty for me was that in rendering dialogue, the reader made rather excessive use of a sort of measured sneering tone that many times I did not find justified by the text.

Really good read

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I enjoyed this but not as much as other Le Carre books. The narrator was fine but I wish he didn't make so many characters speak in grumpy supressed rage tones. The lesson of the story is Do Not Be An Agent! All you will get for your sacrifice is to be played like a sucker by a load of game-playing desk men and ultimately be abandoned.

Is it still true today

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