John le Carré shared 3 beloved books
After 25 years, George Smiley made a grand return in 2017 in A Legacy of Spies. His creator, former British intelligence officer, John le Carré says the new novel, "[E]nds a canon in my work... and it could easily be my last book."
Le Carré, author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Constant Gardener, rose to literary prominence and up bestseller lists by crafting ingeniously complicated stories set in the world of spies and secrets. Though he's considered a master of fiction, his reading habits tend toward nonfiction. Below, he shares three books that are meaningful to him.
Le Carré died on Dec. 12, 2020.
He shared this list with CBC Books in 2017, when he was interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel for Writers & Company.
The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff
"At the moment I've just put down a book that is soon-to-be-published. It's a new [biography] of Joseph Conrad called The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff. It's really very interesting; a very modern vision of Conrad and how he spoke for the effects of globalization from very early on."
Churchill and Orwell by Thomas E. Ricks
"Another one is a book by Thomas Ricks about Winston Churchill and George Orwell. The two never met, but their parallel lives and their views of how society should function, notions of individual freedom, limitations of politics and so on — extraordinarily harmonious thoughts in different places, really very impressive. I went in assuming [they'd be at odds], but quite the reverse. Really, very interesting."
The Hotel Years by Joseph Roth
"I love going back to Joseph Roth. He's one of the best journalists who ever lived and certainly an amazing writer and novelist. His book called The Hotel Years are articles he wrote about staying in hotels, mostly in eastern Europe as it then was in the last days of the Austrian Habsburg Empire. I love his style of observation and his descriptions of characters and so on. I always feel enriched when I put down a book by Joseph Roth."
