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The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Penguin Modern Classics) Paperback – 29 July 2010
John le Carré
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Print length272 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherPenguin UK
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Publication date29 July 2010
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Dimensions19.8 x 1.7 x 12.9 cm
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ISBN-100141194529
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ISBN-13978-0141194523
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Product description
Review
The best spy story I have ever read -- Graham Greene
The master storyteller ... has lost none of his cunning -- A. N. Wilson
I have re-read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold over and over again since I first encountered it in my teens, just to remind myself how extraordinary a work of fiction can be. ― Malcolm Gladwell
One of those very rare novels that changes the way you look at the world. Unflinching, highly sophisticated, superb. ― William Boyd
About the Author
John Le Carre or David John Moore Cornwell was a graduate of modern languages. He worked for a brief stint as a school teacher before joining the Intelligence division of Britain Foreign Services. He also wrote written A Perfect Spy, A Murder of Quality and Iron Curtain. He won several awards, like the Somerset Maugham award and The British Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger award. He produced the Tailor of Panama and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
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Product details
- Publisher : Penguin UK (29 July 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0141194529
- ISBN-13 : 978-0141194523
- Item Weight : 224 g
- Dimensions : 19.8 x 1.7 x 12.9 cm
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Best Sellers Rank:
#7,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Cold War
- #92 in Thrillers and Suspense
- #126 in Mysteries (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Customer reviews
Top reviews from India
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Don't get mislead by raving of renowned authors and publications. Probably ' best spy story' when there was no spy story benchmark. It is unlockable book. Complete waste of time.
I am still reading it, having just begun, but fragments read all those years back have been coming to mind. The atmosphere is taut, and the plot marvelous. Le Carre is a master of the espionage thriller and it is never more in evidence than in this work. According to Graham Greene this is the best spy story he ever read. When one gets a work like this into the person library, one feels like one has come in from the cold of mediocrity!
The quality of paper and print looks cheap. It looks like a pirated copy. Not happy with the product quality.
Attaching pictures of the book along with other original Penguin publication book.

By Abhinav on 26 March 2019
The quality of paper and print looks cheap. It looks like a pirated copy. Not happy with the product quality.
Attaching pictures of the book along with other original Penguin publication book.


Top reviews from other countries

It is the story of Alex Leamas, a senior British agent working in Berlin. When his network is blown and his key agent is killed he returns to a desk job in London. From there he goes rapidly downhill, being dismissed for misconduct before finding a dead end job in a library, assaulting a shop keeper and being sent to prison. On the way he becomes involved with the innocent Liz.
Except that isn't the real story, it is all an elaborate plan for Leamas to defect in order to dicredit a senior figure in East German intelligence.
At the very top level, the Spy Who Came in from the Cold is an intricately plotted espionage thriller full of unexpected plot twists. However, to view it thus is to do it a disservice. To describe it as having a twisting plot suggests a mechanical, formula driven work. In truth it is a novel of subtle ambiguity which feels like walking through fog, which occasionally clears, giving a different perspective on the story.
To describe it as a thriller suggests good guys and bad guys fighting their way to a clear denouement. In fact it is a book painted in shades of moral grey. All of the characters, east and west, are human, flawed,and utterly believable. The core of the book is a single moral question. Can the good fight be fought using the tools of darkness. It is the same theme as Le Carre returns to in Smiley's people.
This is marketed as the third Smiley novel, but in truth he barely features, although his influence is all pervasive.
Simply magnificent.

Here we meet Alec Leamus, who losing his best intelligence source from East Germany is called back to the Circus. Whilst there a plot is created to what looks like bring down the serving head of the East German Secret Service. Thus Leamus takes to his new role, whilst all hope that things will go according to plan.
We thus read of what happens next, and as it starts to dawn on Alec, perhaps he is in way above his head with subtleties appearing and other inconsistencies in the plot. Le Carré is clever here in that although this seems to be an easy read there is a lot of complexity to the story, as he reveals only bits of the plan as we go along, leaving us as much in the dark as Leamus. This works very well as it gives us an appreciation and feel for the paranoia and unease that you would expect from such a situation, when you start to discover that what you think is planned isn’t quite the whole story.
Raising the question of whether the good guys should behave in a much better and grander way than the bad guys, this is still something that is discussed continually and no doubt will be for evermore. It is given then a feeling of authenticity and becomes believable as this is a tale not of black and white, but of grey, and let’s face it there are lots of things that fall into a grey murky world all around us.
In all then this is always a joy to read, showing the complexities, morals and ethics that are raised in something like Intelligence work and wars, and the price that has to be paid. This is then quite deep and thoughtful and would probably make a good choice for book groups.


The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is John Le Carre’s 1963 novel about the Cold War, as fought by the secret services of Britain on one side, East Germany and Russia on the other. Well, I talk of sides, but that isn’t really accurate. You’d think it would be clear which side was which, seeing as there’s a great big Berlin Wall between them, topped with barbed wire, swept by search lights, guarded by soldiers. Ironically, the book shows that one side is much the same as the other. It is difficult to work out who is working for whom. Spies double cross their governments, though that treachery might be loyal service in disguise. Both sides use the same ruthless methods.
There is a curious use of the word “same” in the novel. It crops up a lot. Have a look at page 12 - when Control is talking to our world-weary spy protagonist, Alec Leamas. The word “same” appears nine times. And then through the book, it’s there repeatedly - 57 times in all. I counted them! Same even appears on the very last page, referring to steps on a ladder over the Berlin Wall. Same, same, same. That got me thinking - when we find the same cold on both sides of the wall, a reader could be forgiven for thinking that the cold is everywhere, and there is no coming in from it.
But there is warmth in the book, personified in certain individuals, particularly in the figure of Liz Gold, a lovely, caring women Alec Leamas meets while working in a library. She is nurturing, sensible and kind, the moral compass of the book really. Consider Elizabeth Gold’s name. Gold has all sorts of positive connotations of warmth and happiness. Then again, don’t you think gold sounds so much like cold? It’s sounds almost the SAME! If the cold is everywhere, maybe the warm is too.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is a fascinating book, a compelling spy story hiding all sorts of subtlety, like a cold war cypher. It is certainly true that readers can make a pessimistic interpretation. John Le Carre, by all accounts was himself a pessimistic and troubled man. Nevertheless, there is something in his book, a suggestion that while we are out in the cold with no possible hope of relief, warmth is never far away.

George Smiley was introduced in Call for the Dead in 1961. He returned in 1962 in A Murder of Quality, his only story set outside the intelligence community. Then, in 1963, comes the masterpiece: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold which remains the best spy story I have ever read (I agree with Graham Greene). It is a recognition of the quality of Le Carré’s writing that I could remember the book so well, almost quoting some passages verbatim.
The story relates a complicated act of deadly triple-bluff created by the British Secret Service against its enemies in the German Democratic Republic, the Abteilung. Alec Leamas is at the centre of the plot - believes he is on a clever undercover mission of revenge but clever British brains have other motives… Le Carré laces the plot with multifarious complexities as Leamas comes to realise that he has been used by his own side - fooled, manipulated and misinformed. Leamas has travelled deep into the heart of Communist Germany, ostensibly to betray his country. Smiley tries to help the woman, Liz Gold, that Leamas has befriended with devastating consequences…
The Spy… is a dark, brutal, totally believable tale of espionage during the Cold War. Spies, summed up by Leamas to Liz Gold: ”What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs…” This is a terminally fatigued Alec Leamas and the ending of the story still leaves me devastated.