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A Most Wanted Man | 
 enlarge | Author: John Le Carre
Creator: Roger Rees
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $12.75
You Save: $27.24 (68%)
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Rating:  122 reviews
Sales Rank: 92003
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 10
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 5.8 x 5.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0743579259
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780743579254
ASIN: 0743579259
Publication Date: October 7, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good, but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love, or pity, and remain good "patriots" -- this is the fabric of John le Carre's fiercely compelling and current novel A Most Wanted Man.A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa. Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client's survival becomes more important to her than her own career -- or safety. In pursuit of Issa's mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Freres, a failing British bank based in Hamburg. Annabel, Issa and Brue form an unlikely alliance -- and a triangle of impossible love is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the "War on Terror," the rival spies of Germany, England and America converge upon the innocents. Thrilling, compassionate, peopled with characters the listener never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 117 more reviews...
 "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." September 18, 2008
55 out of 67 found this review helpful
George Orwell.
With the possible exception of one young German lawyer there are no revolutionary acts in John Le Carre's "A Most Wanted Man". Rather, we have high-level functionaries from German, British, and US intelligence agencies for whom deceit is the norm and truth plays, at best, a secondary role in acting in what is or may be in each country's national interest. In tone and substance this is not much different from Le Carre's Cold War fiction. The trick is to see whether the same cynical realism plays as well in today's `war on terror'. Le Carre's transition from the Cold War to the brave new world post-9/11 is excellent. The result is a book that is dark, cynical, and almost as rewarding as the best of Le Carre's earlier fiction.
The most wanted man in question is Issa. Issa is the product of the rape of a Chechnyan woman by a Red Army Colonel stationed in Chechnya. Raised by his father in Russia, Issa flees to the west after his father dies. Issa finds his way to Hamburg and despite his famished look it appears that Issa has connection to money and influence. He is also, apparently, a Muslim and because of his Chechnyan heritage he is identified by Russian intelligence agencies as a suspected terrorist. German, US, and British intelligence agencies based in Hamburg quickly identify him as a person of interest. The other main protagonists are Annabel Richter and Tommy Brue. Richter is a newly qualified attorney who has foregone work in private practice to work for a German civil rights organization created to assist immigrants and refugees in normalizing their status in Germany. Brue is a private banker whose bank is the depository of the significant funds Issa may lay claim to.
Le Carre does a wonderful job portraying Issa, Richter, and Brue. Issa is a total cipher. He has a naive innocence about him (think of Chance from Jerzy Kosinki's Being There) that takes the reader in one direction in assessing his motives and the real reason for his presence in Germany. Yet there are enough anomalies and discrepancies in his story and in his remarks to Richter and Brue that make you go, "hold on a moment, there's more here than meets the eye." Richter is something of a naif, her idealism tends to obscure her ability to cast a truly critical eye over the gaps in Issa's story.
Tennyson once wrote:
"That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight."
Le Carre writes with exquisite precision and insight about a world in which truth is not a matter worth fighting for. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig
A Most Wanted Novelist December 20, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Fete of Death
I'm not going to make any bones about "A Most Wanted Man." It's one of le Carre's best works to date.
Le Carre continues to run rings around other writers in the espionage thriller field. Whereas most of these writers feel compelled to espouse their political views at the expense of story and character and to mortgage their talent to their PC publishers who have political axes to grind, le Carre remains objectively bent on telling a well-crafted, well-written story.
Other, lesser, writers, propagandists essentially, may fume and pontificate on their soapboxes about their political weltanschauungs in preachy novels that masquerade as thrillers. Le Carre, however, doesn't permit his political biases to interfere with his art. This is especially true in "A Most Wanted Man," which is more a novel than it is a thriller in the sense that there isn't much action in it. It's a novel about lies, manipulation, and double-dealing in the spy game, where the innocent and the guilty become caught up in an internecine clandestine political imbroglio beyond their control.
--Bryan Cassiday, author of "Fete of Death"
Delicately Nuanced Look at Integrity, Promises, Interests, Power, and Prejudices September 7, 2008
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
I thought that this was the best spy novel about the War on Terror that I've read by quite a large margin. Don't miss this book!
Only John Le Carre could take us to delicately into the middle of the War on Terror to show, not tell, what's wrong with the approach. In the process, he reveals how the ego of power overwhelms the scruples of even the most moral, those who hope to improve, and people who just want to keep promises. At the same time, he displays the problems that occur when many different spy and police agencies try to work together. Regardless of your political and ethical views, this story will shake you to the soles of your feet.
A most wanted man makes his early appearance as a quiet, ill-looking beggar-like person who can't be driven off. Even to a Muslim family in Hamburg, Germany, this newcomer seems pretty odd. When they see the seeming beggar a little more closely, they are shocked and want to help. Others have the same reaction, beginning with the lawyer, Annabel Richter, who is summoned to help a most wanted man "regularize" his situation. That contact soon draws in a Scottish banker, Tommy Brue, who isn't too happy with his life.
But there are larger interests at stake, and those interests all have different plans for the most wanted man, a man with secrets and with a moral position he wants to assert. Is there forgiveness in the world? Will past wrongs be considered?
We only hear dialogue from the most wanted man and what others have to say about him. But from those sources, we gain insights into someone whose life is much different from our own. It's a challenging task of character development, but it works well in Le Carre's masterful hands.
The lawyer, the banker, and some of the spies are also narrators which allows us to get closer to them. These portrayals help us come into touch with ourselves, with that part of us that wants to do the right thing.
But, like life, there's a lot going on that isn't clear to anyone. You'll be as in the dark as many of the characters are. Pay attention and you'll learn.
One of the author's finest novels. September 6, 2008
8 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is one of John Le Carre's finest novels--and that's saying something. A modern spy novel, yes, but one filled with literary nuance and painted with extraordinary insight and telling details. A dazzling story with delicious tension. And in the perfect ending, providing us with an artful presentation of the human condition.
The plot revolves around a trinity of characters--one old and worldly, one young and heroic, one child-like simple. The simple one, Issa, may or not be what he appears to be, but one way or another, he is a child of god in the Cormac McCarthy sense. Issa is the name by which Arabic nations commonly refer to Jesus of Nazareth.
Le Carre weaves a master plot, relevant to our times, filled with cross-alliances and duplicity. "Decent people wanting to do good, but caught in the moral maze," as the author says. This not only fits the novel, it characterizes our dilemma as a culture, torn between terror and compassion.
This is among the five best novels I have read all year, and it looks like it will get the play in the media that it deserves. The end of great literature is compassion, and this novel has it in the right degree. One to put beside John Le Carre's great novel from the 1960s, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD.
The Next Generation of the SPY genre has arrived...from the master himself. September 2, 2008
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
No author's name is more closely associated with the SPY genre than John Le Carre', except of course Ian Fleming, and Le Carre' nearly has as many film adaptations, as well, most recently the successful "The Constant Gardner." Like Fleming, Le Carre' had a background in the British Foreign Service (he was stationed for the creation of the Berlin Wall). For a generation, his spy novels are legend: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" "the Honourable Schoolboy," "The Little Drummer Girl," "The Russia House," "The Tailor of Panama," "Smiley's People," but "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" put him on the map.
This, his 21st novel is no exception to the greatness that has come before, nor is it any less likely to achieve commercial success as a film, as it is currently in the works. "A Most Wanted Man" holds Le Carre's trademark storytelling with infinite respect for the reader's intelligence while he presents a 21st century espionage tale during the "War on Terror" complete with compassionate characters struggling issues of patriotism and morality, irrational relationships of convenience and unlikely alliances. Set in North Germany, "A Most Wanted Man" tells the tale of a Muslim mystery man, asylum-seeker who arrives in Hamburg to enroll in medical school, but due to a questionable history becomes involved with multiple intelligence groups, German and Western. Is he controlled by Islamic forces? This man finds himself teaming up with a Human Rights lawyer and the private banker finding himself involved. The reader finds themselves part of balancing the political imperative against the private lives and potential loves of this triangle of characters. Le Carre's love of the region is apparent as the story progresses, via these characters.
Like most of Le Carre's works this baby is a true page-turner , I am fired up for the big screen version.
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