r/LeCarre

I am just in the process of re-listening to THS read by Michael Jayston, and the opening passage with High Haven is, in my opinion, one of the best openings to a novel in the English language.

In either The Pigeon Tunnel or the introduction to A Perfect Spy, Lecarre talks about how his experience as a student in Switzerland and Germany led him to write "Novels with German themes". What did he mean by this?

I've never heard of it before, and the audiobook is on sale at Chirp with Michael Jayston narrating. I'll probably buy it based on that alone, but I was wondering if anyone here who's read it can tell me if it's worthwhile. Thank you.

The podcast will be a limited series examining “The Fire Next Time,” by James Baldwin; “Song of Solomon,” by Toni Morrison; “All the Pretty Horses,” by Cormac McCarthy; “Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson; “All the King’s Men,” by Robert Penn Warren; and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” by John le Carré.

Anybody else think it's definitely his best? And I'm a massive fan of Le Carre in general.

Did anyone else mildly suspect Molly Meakin of being a double agent/mole? There are some allusions in the novel to the fear that Haydon may have had a successor in place to continue his work when he was inevitably caught or extracted, which put me in the mind of who it might be, and she seemed like the prime candidate. Young and alluring in a disarming way, cozies up to the right hand man of the head of the Circus (but in a smooth hard-to-get style, not obviously trying), and always seems to end up in the rooms where the most vital discussions are being held despite her relatively lowly official status. Even at the end of the novel she appears to be one of the few members of Smiley’s crew to survive the purge and remain well-positioned in the Circus thanks to Connie’s advice.

Obviously this does not appear to be the direction le Carré went with her, or if she was we’re never told about it. But did anyone else have a similar vibe when they read the book? I at least imagine this may have been intended as a potential fear for the reader (even as a red herring).

I was rereading the first chapter of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (TSWCIFTC) yesterday in its 1964 French translation (by Marcel Duhamel and Henri Robillot) and one passage struck me.

In the original English text, there is this passage where Leamas questions Elvira about Karl Riemeck's location:

>Leamas walked over to the car, and said to the woman,
“Where is he?”
“They came for him and he ran. He took the bicycle. They can't have known about me.”
“Where did he go?”
“We had a room near Brandenburg, over a pub. He kept a few things there, money, papers. I think he'll have gone there. Then he'll come over.”

The sentence "We had a room near Brandenburg, over a pub" was translated into French as "Nous avions une chambre près de la porte Brandebourg, au-dessus d'un café" which would translate back into English as: "We had a room near the Brandenburg Gate, over a pub."

The novel takes place in 1962-63, in Berlin. And at that time, the Brandenburg Gate was located just a few meters behind the Berlin Wall, inside East Berlin. Because of its location right on the sector border, the Brandenburg Gate was trapped inside the restricted "death strip" (Sperrgebiet): to prevent East Germans from trying to flee to the West, East German authorities had cleared the historic square around the gate (Pariser Platz) and turned it into a heavily fortified exclusion zone. Since it was located in this no man's land, both East and West Berlin citizens were strictly forbidden from approaching the Brandenburg Gate, and it therefore seems very unlikely or even possible that there could be a café or a bar nearby where someone could rent a room above it... Plus, it would be a very poorly chosen spot for a safehouse, wouldn't it?

Furthermore, John le Carré would have written "the Brandenburg Gate" if he had meant the Brandenburg Gate, right?

I therefore conclude that there is a translation error in the French version of the novel (and it's not the only one!). Elvira is actually talking about a room located near the city of Brandenburg an der Havel, in the GDR west of Berlin, and not near the Brandenburg Gate. Do you confirm that this is indeed the case?

If that is the case, and if Elvira is telling the truth, Riemeck sets off by bicycle from Brandenburg an der Havel (or its surroundings) to go to Berlin and cross to the West. I looked on Google Maps and the closest checkpoint to Brandenburg an der Havel is the Glienicke Bridge (the famous Bridge of Spies, which crosses the Havel), connecting Potsdam to Berlin. It's a journey of about 45 km, or about 2 hours and 30 minutes by bike, which is entirely feasible... We don't know in the novel which checkpoint Riemeck is shot at, but I had always imagined it at a part of the Wall within Berlin itself (maybe because of the 1965 movie opening scene?), only to realize thanks to this translation error that Riemeck was actually shot at a checkpoint located west of West Berlin...

After many false starts, I finally finished TTSS, and I as I expected, I loved it, but as well know, it is a book with lots of small details. At some point, I lost a thread on Ricky Tarr's character. He went from willing informant to on-the-run, I feel I missed something of why he ran. He was never a mole, nefarious (I think), but I lost why he ran. I know he did not tell the full truth. Was it just his love of Irinia that drove this all for him? Some portion of his arc I missed (probably a night of nodding off while reading).

In *The Honourable Schoolboy*, there's a piece of jargon I wanted to check the definition of.

When Luke visits Craw in his retirement, quite near the beginning of the book, Luke ends up bumping into George Smiley, who is visiting Craw.

Craw describes Smiley as a "fireman", along with some stuff about how he's an influencial back room boy with his newspaper.

Exactly what's meant by "fireman"? I'm guessing it's something along the lines of a newspaper editor who can deal with problems as they arise? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick entirely, your graces?