San Antonio College Library

This book explores the historical contexts and political implications of le Carré's major Cold-War novels. The first in-depth study of le Carré this century, it analyses his work in light of key topics in 20th-century history, including containment of Communism, decolonization, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, the Cambridge spy-ring, the Vietnam War, the 70s oil crisis and Thatcherism.

In this first extended study of Le Carre's novels, David Monaghan aims to provide for Le Carré readers an examination of that writer's major concerns and achievement.

"In this analysis, Frederick Hitz, former inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency, contrasts the writings of well-known authors of spy novels - classic and popular - with real-life espionage cases. Drawing on personal experience both as a participant in "the Great Game" and as the first presidentially appointed inspector general, Hitz shows the remarkable degree to which truth is stranger than fiction." "The vivid cast of characters...

"This book examines the tradition of the spy narrative from its inception in the late nineteenth century through the present day. Ranging from John le Carre's bestsellers to Elizabeth Bowen's novels, from James Bond to John Banville's contemporary narratives. Allan Hepburn sets the historical contexts of these fictions: the Cambridge spy ring; the Profumo Affair; the witch-hunts against gay men in the civil service and diplomatic corps in the 1950s."--Jacket....

"In The Covert Sphere, Melley links this cultural shift to the birth of the national security state in 1947. As the United States developed a vast infrastructure of clandestine organizations, it shielded policy from the public sphere and gave rise to a new cultural imaginary, "the covert sphere." One of the surprising consequences of state secrecy is that citizens must rely substantially on fiction to "know," or imagine, their nation's foreign policy....