The Little Drummer Girl: A Novel

John le Carré

Jun 2011 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; now a miniseries on AMC starring Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Shannon, and Florence Pugh.

"You want to catch the lion, first you tether the goat."

On holiday in Mykonos, Charlie wants only sunny days and a brief escape from England’s bourgeois dreariness. Then a handsome stranger lures the aspiring actress away from her pals—but his intentions are far from romantic. Joseph is an Israeli intelligence officer, and Charlie has been wooed to flush out the leader of a Palestinian terrorist group responsible for a string of deadly bombings. Still uncertain of her own allegiances, she debuts in the role of a lifetime as a double agent in the “theatre of the real.”
 
Haunting and deeply atmospheric, John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl is a virtuoso performance and a powerful examination of morality and justice.
 
With an introduction by the author.

Ratings and reviews

John le Carré's books are normally nail-biting, absorbing reads. I saw and enjoyed the Hollywood movie version years ago and never read the book until now. The movie is much more coherent and satisfying. The book is a mad tangle of unsympathetic characters rationalizing their horrid actions. To add insult to injury, the final chapter leaves you confused, irritated, and unsatisfied as there was nothing was solved or gained by what any of the characters went through. Very odd book.

A terrific story and wonderful prose. Entirely credible, complex characters. A bit languid at the start but a great climax.

Thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking.

About the author

John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a con man, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on December 12, 2020.