The Pigeon Tunnel : : Stories From my Life

Locations
Call Number: 921 Le Carré, John, Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Le Carre, John
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	921 Le Carré, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Le Carre, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Don't be beastly to your Secret Service -- Dr Globke's laws -- Official visit -- Fingers on the trigger -- To whomsoever it may concern -- Wheels of British justice -- Ivan Serov's defection -- A legacy -- The innocence of Murat Kurnaz -- Going out into the field -- Bumping into Jerry Westerby -- Lonely in Vientiane -- Theatre of the Real : dances with Arafat -- Theatre of the Real : the Villa Brigitte -- Theatre of the Real : a question of guilt -- Theatre of the Real : terms of endearment -- The Soviet knight is dying inside his armour -- The Wild East : Moscow 1993 -- Blood and treasure -- The biggest bears in the garden -- Among the Ingush -- Joseph Brodsky's prize -- The wrong horse's mouth -- His brother's keeper -- Quel Panama! -- Under deep cover -- Hunting for warlords -- Richard Burton needs me -- Alec Guinness -- Lost masterpieces -- Bernard Pivot's necktie -- Lunching with prisoners -- Son of the author's father -- To Reggie with thanks -- The most wanted man -- Stephen Spender's credit card -- Advice to an aspiring novelist -- The last official secret.
"From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, John Le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his highly anticipated memoir, Le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine-gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth, celebrating New Year's Eve with Yasser Arafat and his high command, interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev, meeting with two former heads of the KGB, watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations, or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in his The Constant Gardener, Le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood. Best of all, Le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer's journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters."-- Dust jacket.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

le Carre memoir submitted by camelsamba on August 12, 2018, 11:23pm I've been on a John le Carré kick for most of 2017, so I grabbed this memoir. It was interesting enough, but I think I would have found it even more interesting if I'd read beyond his cold war body of work. Many of the chapters give the back story behind certain novels, and since I hadn't read those novels, it wasn’t as meaningful as it might have been with a few exceptions: the woman (aid worker) who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, and the person who inspired The Most Wanted Man. Another compelling chapter is Lunching with Prisoners, which tells the tale of a man held prisoner in Beirut who kept himself sane by reading, including one of le Carré’s novels.

Le Carré is the prose champion submitted by ken on June 18, 2020, 1:15pm I've read almost all, if not all, of Le Carré's novels. While I enjoy the complex plots, I love the prose. These vignettes from his life are crisp, evocative, and illustrative of how he creates his characters and settings and conjures up his novels.