Absolute Friends

Read for the Joy of Words Once again I've delved into the books by Le Carre. Throughout his novels the writing is rich, so rich that it might be called poetic prose. This is not an easy read, turgid and dark, but we learn intensively about the two Absolute Friends. Moreover, this is a history lesson over a spate of years. It's not quite nihilistic but IS lugubrious and I must admit to a very sad end. I was left musing the emptiness of war and the devaluing of human lives.Le Carre stands alone in this writin. Jessie Riley said Cutting and plausible portrait. After several reads & rereads of Le Carré's Smiley novels, I chose this one as a branching out point to his more contemporary works, and was not disappointed. As a left-leaner myself, I found his perspective on the Iraq war insightful, especially as seen through Mundy's eyes. The writing style is just as detailed and rich as it is in Le Carré's other works -- The Honourable Schoolboy and its richly textured descriptions of Hong Kong come to mind.I would give this book. Kindle Customer said Again, The Best. If Mr. Le Carre should stop write novel, I would be very unhappy.His insight mixed with light fiction is amazing.I would not recommend this book to anyone with ultra conservative leanings nor to members of the ' tea party '.

All rights reserved. The story melds the poignant personal tale of Mundy's unwavering altruism with the author's sardonic take on the perfidy of economic globalization. His nuances, accents and inflections are as brilliantly precise as his prose. Both themes are well-preserved in this seamless abridgement. A surprisingly long flashback takes listeners from Ted and Sasha's first meeting in West Berlin in 1969 through the Cold War and, consequently, their careers as spies, before returning to Sasha's present scheme to save the world from Western imperialism. For example, Le Carre lends Mundy's voice a note of optimistic naivet‚ that eventually ages into a soft, measured fatalism, but for the ever-aggressive Sasha, his voice takes on a nervous intensity. . From Publishers W

The friends of the title are Ted Mundy, British soldier's son born 1947 in a shining new independent Pakistan, and Sasha, refugee son of an East German Lutheran pastor and his wife who have sought sanctuary in the West. ABSOLUTE FRIENDS is a superbly paced novel spanning fifty-six years, a theatrical masterstroke of tragi-comic writing, and a savage fable of our times, almost of our hours. Le Carre's new novel presents us with magical writing, characters to delight, and a spellbinding story that enchan