Smiley's People is one of John le Carre's classic Cold War novels and George Smiley one of his most acclaimed characters. Into a shadowy, violent and intricate world steeped in moral ambivalence steps George Smiley, sometime acting Chief of the Circus, as the Secret Service is known. His brief is to bury crime, not solve it, as he fights his own private battle from London to Paris and to Hamburg for his last duel with his Russian opposite number, codenamed Karla.

Author Biography

John le Carre was born in 1931. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a wide reputation which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. His other novels include The Constant Gardener, Absolute Friends and The Mission Song. A Most Wanted Man is his twentieth novel.