Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the City for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But after only a couple of months into his new career, Edward, a Polish émigré, shows up at his door with a very keen interest in Julian's new enterprise and a lot of knowledge about his family history. And when a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea . . .
Silverview is the mesmerising story of an encounter between innocence and experience and between public duty and private morals. In this last complete masterwork from the greatest chronicler of our age, John le Carré asks what you owe to your country when you no longer recognise it.
'Crisp prose, a precision-tooled plot, the heady sense of an inside track on a shadowy world ... all his usual pleasures are here'
'Valedictory, with a final turn of events that ends surprisingly but pleasingly in a cock-up, this is a satisfying coda to the career of the finest thriller writer of the 20th century'
'A lyrical, poignant portrait of betrayal in a family that lives in a world submerged in subterfuge. It resonates with le Carré's exquisite genius'
'Le Carré at his finest'
'John le Carré's last completed spy novel crowns a career attuned to moral ambivalence.'