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A Most Wanted Man | 
 enlarge | Author: John Le Carre
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
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Rating:  96 reviews
Sales Rank: 160
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 1416594884
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781416594888
ASIN: 1416594884
Publication Date: October 7, 2008
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Product Description
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 Carre'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 Freres, 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 91 more reviews...
 Classic LeCarre, including his political agenda November 20, 2008
Recently it came to light that John LeCarre considered defecting to the Soviets while in the British government's service. In this book he continues deeper on his politically left-driven agenda, and I must say it cheapens his otherwise classic prose.
If you think of this piece as coming from Putin's poisoned publishers, then you might relax and enjoy it, with your intellectual shotgun by your side, that is.
 le Carre is continuing his code of honor and attempting to tell everyone that the "emperor has no clothes." November 18, 2008
After reading the first few lines of A MOST WANTED MAN by John le Carre, the setting is not only clearly revealed, it presents a sinister sense of foreboding. Hamburg, Germany, is the background against which the story is juxtaposed. Some readers may be tipped off by this choice of location, where at least six of the 9/11 terrorists, including Mohammed Atta, were undisturbed in plotting their attack. In addition, the dark shadow of Baader-Meinhof lurks in the background.
But as the novel opens we observe a skulking, emaciated, barely clothed young man moving around from pillar to post in the middle of a cold night and very erratic in his manner. Yet something about his determination to stay where he is, huddled in the shadows and then sometimes showing himself, appears studied, deliberate and determined not to leave the area near the train station. Despite trying to hide himself in plain sight, he strikes a strange pose in this ultra rich city, in his beggar's garb and subservient posture. He seems to be waiting for someone or something but is clearly unable to find who or what it is.
Melik Oktay is a Turkish heavyweight, a runner-up in the North German Championship hundred-meter butterfly stroke and star goalkeeper of his soccer team. He and his mother are leaving a travel shop when he and the stranger make eye contact. Something about him strikes a chord in Melik, but aside from noticing the deplorable shape this person is in, he is used to seeing the dregs of all kinds of humanity around the train station. Over the next few days the young "beggar" seems to be following Melik, who is at a loss to know why or quite what to do about it. Then, out of the blue, Melik answers his doorbell and finds the man holding a piece of cardboard that says in Turkish, "I am a Muslim medical student. I am tired and I wish to stay in your house. Issa." Melik notices a tiny gold replica of the Koran dangling from a bracelet on the boy's wrist. Just as Melik is about to chase him away, Layla intervenes and insists upon taking him into their home. She establishes him in the attic and embraces him as she would a long-lost son.
Issa tries to communicate in a guttural dialect of Turkish. But he could have been Russian. Layla finds out he is a Muslim and had been in prison in Istanbul. When she tries speaking to him in Chechen, they learn that is where he came from. Issa tells them a story that begins with him being smuggled away from his prison by bad people he had to pay. He became part of a group in which he and others were stuffed into a container where they could hardly breathe. They were then put on a ship that was to take them to Denmark (perhaps Copenhagen). But they took a detour to Gothenburg, Sweden, where he escaped back to the ship to Copenhagen. There, he boarded a Chechen lorry bound for Hamburg, and here he is. Melik is driven to the edge of his credulity and by his fury over the inconsistencies of what he has just heard. Even his claim to be a Muslim seems false when his practices do not adhere to the religion's edicts.
The Oktays become more and more uncomfortable with Issa in their home. Mr. Oktay is dead, and although the house is paid off, he was the only one with official German credentials. Layla has been desperately trying to have her status legalized and, with that, Issa's. With all of this in mind, they send Issa to an agency that specializes in helping immigrants.
Annabel Richter is part of Sanctuary North, "A Charitable Christian Foundation for the protection of stateless and displaced persons in the region of North Germany." She is a gung-ho, novice attorney who asks to advocate for Issa. He shows her a small bag around his neck that he claims holds the means he can use to access money from a bank account held by a private bank. The nickname for the special account is Lipizzaner. When the cash is secreted away it is black, and when it sees the light of day it has turned white, a process known as money laundering.
Tommy Brue, the sole surviving partner of an international banking house, is drawn into Issa's life story through secrets about his bank that he doesn't want to remember or know. His father was not always the conservative power broker he purported to be. His dealings with elements of dishonest Soviets, the mafia and others made the bank fortunes, but to Tommy these were ill-gotten gains of which he wanted no part. And for most of his career he has kept his distance from these old transactions only to find the alleged and unlikely legatee (Issa) coming forth in a most unusual way. He receives a mysterious and cryptic phone call from Annabel, who says she must meet with him immediately on behalf of a client.
Meetings convene, calls are made, papers are prepared, and Issa demands that all of his inheritance be donated to his hero, Dr. Abdullah (known by others as "Signpost" since Abdullah's idol, Sayyed Qutub, wrote the spiritual handbook of all Islamic militants, called Signposts Along the Way), who he believes is "a man of G-d" known for his philanthropic work to help the world's forgotten people. More calls and meetings ensue, and soon, among the three principals (Issa, Annabel and Tommy) arrangements are made for a final distribution of the fortune to be held at the bank --- all kept under wraps and secret.
Or so they think. It never occurs to any of them that they are being watched, followed, tape-recorded and not in control of their destinies. The "protectors" are made up of different anti-terrorism groups: German, British and American, each with agendas and egos that allow them all to skirt the law or make it up as they go along. The only one still not completely jaded and perverse is Gunther Bachman, who does not ascribe to the philosophy of the British and American "spooks," who believe they can do anything they want to anyone they think may be a terrorist. Bachman is not really interested in Issa per se; he has his eye on Signpost, who he believes is sending money not to charities but to terrorists. Could Issa know this? And is this why he demands that the Imam have all of his inheritance? Or is Bachman correct in his assessment of Issa and in direct conflict with his superiors?
John le Carre's worldview has always been to put human rights in the forefront of any political tension --- and that is clear in A MOST WANTED MAN. He also devotes time to his observation of the ineptness of today's spy masters and anti-terrorist agencies. Readers may already know that le Carre was a British spy. And in his long career, in which he has produced 21 novels, it's not a stretch to understand that his experience, coupled with a strong sense of the human condition and nurtured by his intelligence and imagination, has made him the master of the spy novel. During the Cold War he had a firma terra from which to draw his tales, but in today's world nothing is clear and each day brings new atrocities. A MOST WANTED MAN is many things in addition to being a strong polemic presented in fiction and represents the rage he seems to feel about how the West is fighting against Islamic terrorism.
But regardless of how le Carre expresses his personal politics in his novels, one thing has remained a constant in his work: his honesty. He never tries to mislead his readers nor does he try to disabuse them of their own opinions. Sometimes he may sound shrill or arrogant, and that should provoke readers to start thinking about their world and what is happening in it, especially in today's uncertain times. le Carre is continuing his code of honor and attempting to tell everyone that the "emperor has no clothes."
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
A trop drawer story November 15, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Obama was elected, and my reading of LeCarre's A Most Wanted Man gave me such great pleasure. May LeCarre have all the best for the coming year. In a phrase, we owe him for all the pleasure for all the books he has given us.
A Most Wanted 20th Le Carre Title November 14, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
John le Carre beats many authors of espionage novels for a number of reasons. He's a true first-person Cold War Era authority as he was working for the British Foreign Service in the early '60s, even before the Berlin Wall went up, then eventually for MI6 (the UK's external intelligence agency). Born as David John Moore Cornwell, he wrote his first novel, Call for the Dead in 1961 while still a member of his government's service, thus requiring his use of the pen name we know as John le Carre. It was in that first novel that he introduced George Smiley, his most famous recurring characters, and its sequel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is one of the most celebrated novels in the espionage genre.
But the Cold War as we knew it is over, and the Wall that separated Germany has mostly been sold to souvenir seekers. George Smiley, who would have been over 100 by now, was retired a number of books back, gone but not forgotten. Le Carre's latest book, A Most Wanted Man, introduces us to Issa Karpov, a half-Russian, half-Chechen Muslim refugee in a long black overcoat who has turned up in Hamburg to reclaim a mysterious inheritance and devote himself to Islam. He is also being pursued by competing security services that fear that he just might be there to unleash some fundamentalist havoc upon the country. We meet Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer who is determined to save Issa from deportation, and soon Issa's survival becomes more important to her than her own safety.
Making this into a seemingly improbable trio is one Tommy Brue, a sixty-year-old private banker with a failing British bank based in Hamburg who has a number of secrets, business and personal, that he'd rather not remember. Add to this mix the rival spies of Germany, the US and the UK, all set to converge upon the unlikely trio, as they've identified Issa as the perfect live bait for an altogether bigger fish.
This is a tale about corruption, both political and private. The plot revolves around the most highly-debated debated policies in a contemporary terror-freighted Europe, and Le Carre creates credible, lifelike characters whose conflict with the agents of the powers that be add to the dark realism of the novel. Keep in mind that it's set in Hamburg, the former home of the 9/11 hijackers, which in some ways explains the concerns of the German security services at the arrival of Issa, whose name indecently, is said to mean Jesus. The symbolism has a somewhat subtle point.
But since the end of the Cold War, the US seems to have replaced the USSR as the antagonist of choice in Le Carre's writings. He has never disguised his sometimes contemptuous attitude for much that is American, but it seems to have increased over the last decade.
Absolute Friends was disappointing to this reader because it seemed that Le Carre couldn't choose between writing a solid book or an anti-American lecture, and it didn't function effectively as either. It reflected the author's anger against justification by both the US and the UK for their current involvement in Iraq as the front line in the war against Muslim terrorism.
This attitude hasn't stopped me from buying and reading everything he has written, but I do wish that he would treat the Americans and his own British countrymen with the appreciation and compassion that he shows to Muslim fundamentalists. There is, however, something to be said for such a usually unemotional and dispassionate writer as Le Carre letting his passion to get the better of him once in awhile, as he has done in his latest offering. Few writers of spy thrillers deal with contemporary political events with such keen perception as does John Le Carre.
If you're looking for a recent release with white-knuckle car chases, wild exchanges of bullets and sultry women, then Le Carre's stories are not for you. Just look to Ted Bell's Tsar: A Thriller if it's an action-packed spy thriller that you're seeking, as it's all there. Most of Le Carre's books are all about character development and plot, and "A Most Wanted Man" reflects the slow, meticulous process of putting together the intricate espionage enigma.
This is not his best work, in this reader's opinion. George Smiley would be over 100 by now, the Berlin Wall is gone and the Cold War is past us, as noted before. That being said, John Le Carre is still in a league of his own.
Bob's Review November 12, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Great book, full of mystery and action. I highly recommend it to LeCarre's fans. Fast delivery and great price!
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