What Is Techno Again?

If you’ve ever wanted to read spy fiction, then you can’t go wrong with John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The espionage tale follows British agent Alec Leamas, who longs to end his career and seeks to do it by carrying out one last assignment. He suffers dishonor and wades through dangerous secrets, but an even greater peril interferes when he engages in a romantic relationship with a simple Communist woman named Elizabeth Gold.

Isolation and empty concepts of identity seem to be patterns at the root of spy novels, but Le Carré’s work accomplishes something quite unique and devastating. The life of a spy quickly mutilates the passion of curiosity—especially for a double agent. Questions constantly weave in and out of the narrative, which Le Carré fashions carefully enough to make the reader plunge into the same convoluted world of espionage that Leamas endures. God is in the details, as some would say, and the author’s style certainly fulfills that idea.

But those questions, just like curiosity in a spy, get you nowhere. Gaps between and within chapters are purposely placed in order to keep the reader’s knowledge of the true, intimate text at bay; just when the reader thinks he understands what’s going on, something happens in between the lines that turns that perspective upside down. While the protagonist, Leamas, emerges with years of experience in the field, the typical reader comes with startlingly little—and our ignorance is put on display when events seemingly unfold before our eyes yet Leamas appears totally aware of their development.

The novel’s beauty lies not just in its commentary on the time period, but clearly in its craftsmanship; it flourishes in Leamas’ nature, as well. It’s arguable by the end of the book that we know even less about him than we did at the start, and perhaps Leamas himself has become truly lost. Moreover, the ending resonates a frightening reality about the life of a spy that should, by rough description, be quite expected. Yet it still manages to unsettle us, as it does the main character and Liz even before we reach the final lines—which leads one to wonder if Le Carré’s ultimate intention was to dress us all up in the manner of spies and then abandon us out in the cold, taking us for fools playing at a game we can’t understand. Fittingly, the same topsy turvy set of morals courses through the book and shines with vivid clarity in the last few chapters.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold holds a powerful element of transformation within the depths of its pages, and the real joy seems to bud from the mere experience of the read itself—making Le Carré story one not only worth exploring, but coming back to time and again. There’s a reason novelist Graham Greene praises it with the claim, “The best spy story I have ever read.”