John le Carré’s Post–Cold War Fiction

Robert Lance Snyder

204 pages

Published: January 2017

ISBN: 9780826220998

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About This Book: This is an analysis of the first 10 novels of one of the most significant ethicists in contemporary fiction.

This book challenges distinctions between “popular” and “serious” literature by recognizing le Carré as one of the most significant ethicists in contemporary fiction, contributing to an overdue reassessment of his literary stature. Le Carré’s ten post–Cold War novels constitute a distinctive subset of his espionage fiction in their response to the momentous changes in geopolitics that began in the 1990s. Through a close reading of these novels, Snyder traces how—amid the “War on Terror” and transnationalism—le Carré weighes what is at stake in this conflict of deeply invested ideologies.
Authors and Editors: Robert Lance Snyder is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of The Art of Indirection in British Espionage Fiction and editor of two other books. He lives in Carrollton, GA.
Praise For This Book: “Snyder makes an entirely plausible case for reading these novels as narratives of intrigue which at the same time include elaborate, often very ironic dialogues about issues of world security.”—David Seed, University of Liverpool, author of Under the Shadow: The Atomic Bomb and Cold War Narratives

“Makes the case that le Carré’s work is far more significant than mere genre fiction. In this respect Snyder links le Carré’s liberal humanism with that of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Graham Greene.”—Myron J. Aronoff, Rutgers University, author of The Spy Novels of John le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics

“Snyder skillfully directs us toward le Carré’s central revelation: that the various whirlwinds that Western democracies have inherited since the Wall’s fall have been sown by their own arrogance, ignorance, and complacency.”—Cates Baldridge, professor of English and American Literatures, Middlebury College, author of Graham Greene's Fictions: The Virtues of Extremity