Le Carré Prepares His “Field” Notes

Word that renowned British spy novelist John le Carré has a new novel—his 25th—due out in October 2019 has made a predictably large splash in the press. The Guardian reports:

John le Carré is set to confront “the division and rage at the heart of our modern world” in a new novel set in London in 2018 that will be published next year. Agent Running in the Field follows a 26-year-old “solitary” man who, “in a desperate attempt to resist the new political turbulence swirling around him, makes connections that will take him down a very dangerous path,” according to publisher Viking. …

Mary Mount, the author’s publisher at Viking, said that the times called for writers like le Carré. “In his plot and characterisation 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,” she said. “At a moment like this we need writers like him.”

Agent Running in the Field was the original working title for le Carré’s 1986 novel A Perfect Spy, according to Adam Sisman’s 2015 biography of the author.

Double O Section blogger Matthew Bradford adds that le Carré (whose real name is David Cornwell) “may be in the second half of his Eighties now, but, happily, the undisputed master of the spy genre keeps going strong. While either a personal memoir (2016’s The Pigeon Tunnel) or a novel revisiting his most famous character, George Smiley, one last(?) time (2017’s A Legacy of Spies) both seemed like they might be fitting moments to retire, le Carré clearly still has more to say.”

We’ll have to wait another 10 months to find out how much more.