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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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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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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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Spoiled by the first two in the Smiley series with the fabulous Simon Russell Beale narrating. This performance is a considerable step down: monotone mispronunciations, odd emphasis, harshly rendered dialogue, no light and shade at all. All but ruined - if it wasn’t for the Le Carre magic. Read this one on paper.

Great story, awful narrator

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Always loved Le Carrie story but not with this narrator, I lost the plot in the voice

Performance is poor, voice so flat it’s hard to differentiate talking and narrating

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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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