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TechnoTV - A Most Wanted Man
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List Price: $28.00
Our Price: $10.50
Your Save: $ 17.50 ( 63% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Scribner
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781416594888
ISBN: 1416594884
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2008-10-07
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Carre's latest on Islamic Terrorists and spies.
Comment: Illuminates the mindset of Islamic terrorists and theCIA types who pursue them. Book holds reader,s attention though convoluted at times. Not always easy to follow. Burt Shachter
Customer Rating:
Summary: First Le Carre book
Comment: Prompted by an NPR discussion of John LeCarre, I purchased this book. It was my first John LeCarre book. I am familiar with some of his other works, specifically those that were made into films (e.g., Constant Gardener). I enjoyed the book overall, but was left disappointed at the ending which left me unfulfilled.
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Summary: A Cold, Hard Slap in the Face
Comment: John Le Carre's "A Most Wanted Man" has much to say about the upheaval in the post-911 moral universe. Previous fans of Le Carre who reveled in the "West good/ Communist bad" genre of spy novels may be unprepared for the complexities of the post-Cold War age presented in this novel.
Some reviews at this post have decried it as pro-Islamic. Only if you define as pro-Islamic any work which shows that people of an Islamic ideology can be as righteous or self-righteous, as driven and confused, as focused and fragile as any other people.
This is a well-written tale. The characters are given depth enough for us to feel that we know them, but not so much as to distract from the fast-moving plot. This is what readers expect in a spy novel, and Le Carre delivers masterfully.
As an American reader, I found the ending to be a cold, hard slap in the face. And yet I cannot call it unjustified. If our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, then we are responsible for the actions of our government and all its agencies, even underground ones. What Le Carre has given us is a spy novel that makes you think.
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Summary: An axe to grind. . . .
Comment: The Cold War, Le Carre's forte, is long over, and Le Carre has turned his attention to the war on terror. But the sides have switched, and Le Carre's disenchantment with the West pervades his current work. Absolute Friends is another example.
One of the wonderful things about Le Carre was the nuance and ambiguity he brought to his stories, but I feel as if he's lost that. This story is about a mysterious young man who arrives in Hamburg for a mysterious reason. He's a Muslim--maybe, a Chechen--maybe, an escaped prisoner--maybe, a terrorist, an idealist--we don't quite know. For equally mysterious reasons, an idealistic young German lawyer and a not-very-idealistic British private banker decide to save him from deportation, which, given his background and clearly illegal entry into Germany, doesn't seem unreasonable. The Germans, Brits and villainous Americans get into the act as part of a larger scheme to entrap a Muslim cleric. Based on what Le Carre tells us about the cleric, this doesn't seem unreasonable either. But Le Carre clearly thinks it is.
We've all become disenchanted with the war on terror, no doubt, but Le Carre could always show us that all is not what it seems. But now, what he sees is clear, at least for him. It's too bad.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Most Wanted Novelist
Comment: Fete of Death
I'm not going to make any bones about "A Most Wanted Man." It's one of le Carre's best works to date.
Le Carre continues to run rings around other writers in the espionage thriller field. Whereas most of these writers feel compelled to espouse their political views at the expense of story and character and to mortgage their talent to their PC publishers who have political axes to grind, le Carre remains objectively bent on telling a well-crafted, well-written story.
Other, lesser, writers, propagandists essentially, may fume and pontificate on their soapboxes about their political weltanschauungs in preachy novels that masquerade as thrillers. Le Carre, however, doesn't permit his political biases to interfere with his art. This is especially true in "A Most Wanted Man," which is more a novel than it is a thriller in the sense that there isn't much action in it. It's a novel about lies, manipulation, and double-dealing in the spy game, where the innocent and the guilty become caught up in an internecine clandestine political imbroglio beyond their control.
--Bryan Cassiday, author of "Fete of Death"
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Editorial Reviews:
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New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love or pity and remain good "patriots" -- this is the fabric of John le Carré's fiercely compelling and current novel A Most Wanted Man. A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa. Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client's survival becomes more important to her than her own career -- or safety. In pursuit of Issa's mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg. Annabel, Issa and Brue form an unlikely alliance -- and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the "War on Terror," the rival spies of Germany, England and America converge upon the innocents. Thrilling, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.
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