The Night Manager
CBC Books | | Posted: September 8, 2017 4:07 PM | Last Updated: June 28, 2019
John le Carré
On a bleak January night at the outbreak of the Gulf War, Mr. Richard Onslow Roper, a very special visitor, arrives with his entourage at a Zurich hotel. The night manager, Jonathan Pine, recognizes him immediately, but prays that the identification is not mutual.
Suddenly drawn into a new world of espionage, Pine is soon launched on an undercover mission to destroy Roper and an empire built on an unholy alliance between the intelligence community and the secret arms trade. From the cliffs of west Cornwall to northern Quebec, from the Caribbean to the jungles of post-Noriega Panama, his quarry is no less than worst man in the world. (From Penguin Canada)
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From the book
On a snow-swept January evening of 1991, Jonathan Pine, the English night manager of the Hotel Meister Palace in Zurich, forsook his office behind the reception desk and, in the grip of feelings he had not known before, took up his position in the lobby as a prelude to extending his hotel's welcome to a distinguished late arrival. The Gulf war had just begun. Throughout the day, news of the Allied bombings, discreetly relayed by the staff, had caused consternation on the Zurich stock exchange. Hotel bookings, which in any January were low, had sunk to crisis levels. Once more in her long history Switzerland was under siege.
From The Night Manager by John le Carré ©1993. Published by Penguin Canada.