[ad_1]
British writer John Le Carré passed away at the age of 89, this Saturday 12. Author of “The spy who knew too much” and other spy books, he had pneumonia. His death was confirmed by his agent this Sunday.
“It is with great sadness that I must announce that David Cornwell, known worldwide as John Le Carré, died after a brief illness, not related to Covid-19, on the night of Saturday, December 12. He was 89 years old. Our thoughts are with his four children, his family and his wife, Jane, ”posted Jonny Geller, director of the London-based Curtis Brown agency.
Le Carré became known for books with an elegant, fluid and cunning text that enshrined him. His career was fueled by a real knowledge of the world of espionage. His first novel, “The Dead on the Phone”, was released in 1961, when he was still working at MI6, the British intelligence service.
Before Le Carré published the 1963 bestselling book “The Spy Who Came Out of the Cold”, called by British writer Graham Greene “the best spy story ever written”, the model of the modern British spy in fiction it was James Bond. by Ian Fleming.
Bond was quiet, urban, devoted to the queen and the country. With an impeccable talent for getting out of trouble and getting women into bed, Bond fueled the spying myth as a glamorous and exciting game.
Le Carré overturned this notion with books showing British intelligence operations as wells of ambiguity, in which good and evil are too close to be distinguished, and where it is rarely obvious whether the ends, even when they are very clear, justify the objective. means, medium.
Le Carré’s prose has always been taken to another side of the daily life of secret agents. Your characters can be cowards with brief moments of courage, professionals hampered by luck, or people of questionable character. These portraits aroused the ire of many of his former spy buddies, ready to criticize him.
Le Carré refused to allow his books to be considered for literary awards. But many critics considered his literature top-notch.
“I think he has quietly ceased to be a genre writer and will be remembered as perhaps the most representative novelist of the second half of the 20th century in England,” author Ian McEwan told The Telegraph in 2013. According to him, Le Carré “mapped our decline and recorded the nature of our bureaucracies like no other has achieved.
Le Carré’s own experience as a young British agent, coupled with field research as a writer, gave his books a stamp of authority. But he used reality as a starting point to create a unique fictional universe.
In his books, he created, or at least was responsible for popularizing, terms to refer to the British intelligence service, agents, and specific types of operations. These expressions were taken by real British spies to describe their work, just as the Mafia absorbed the language of “The Godfather”.
In a career spanning more than half a century, Le Carré has written more than 25 novels, set in places like Rwanda, Chechnya, Turkey, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. He tackled issues as diverse as the power of the pharmaceutical companies, the Arab-Israeli conflict and, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and his novels became more controversial and he became more politicized, the excesses of the United States and England against human rights. in the war on terror.
If he had political arguments, and, over time, he did, Le Carré elegantly inserted them into complex plots and precise descriptions. You could describe an entire character in one sentence.
The writer had several bestsellers and at least six of his novels, including 1986’s “A Perfect Spy”, described by Philip Roth as “the best English novel since the war”, can be considered classics. But it will always be best known for the books of the Cold War era, it was the one that marked the perfect union between the author and the subject.
Le Carré also wrote a memoir, “The tunnel of the doves: stories of my life” (Record). More than 60 million copies of his books were sold worldwide.
“John Le Carré’s death is an immense loss to all who loved and admired him at Penguim Random House and to the entire cultural and political landscape of this country,” said Mary Mount, Le Carré editor at Penguin Random House during the last ten years. years of life of the writer. “He was a writer who cared almost as deeply for his country as he did for his work. It was a pleasure and a privilege to work with him. It also made me laugh, quite a bit. “
Tom Weldon, CEO of Penguim Random House UK, said Carré’s work “will be read and loved for many generations.”
Jonny Geller, manager of Le Carré, said the writer is an “undisputed giant of English literature.” “He defined the era of the Cold War and spoke the truth without fear of power for decades to come. His work has been read and loved around the world for six decades. His third novel, “The Spy Who Came Out of the Cold,” in 1963, made him the most famous spy writer in the world. I represented David for almost 15 years. I lost a mentor, an inspiration and, most importantly, a friend. We will not see someone like him. “
Com The New York Times
