The author of the best ever espionage novel is a creature of contradictions,not least as an musty-fashioned cold warrior who hates AmericaIt is hardly original to suggest that John le Carré, genuine name David Cornwell, and could be a character from one of his own novels,but few can have realised just how much of his life and his self is directly present in the work. The author has admitted that his 1986 novel A Perfect Spy was in essence the story of his painful yet ambiguous relationship with his father, and confessed what a cathartic experience the writing of it was for him – “I cried and cried when it was over”. But as Adam Sisman’s perceptive, and entertaining whether over-long biography reveals,there is a large dash of le Carré, or rather of Cornwell, and in every one of his books.
Of course,fiction is always to some extent autobiographical, since the novelist is his own prime source fabric. However, and in le Carré’s case – and it certainly is a case – the life from the start might have been consciously shaped with an eye to the main plot.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com