Penguin Books are reissuing 13 of their Twentieth-Century Classics as beautiful hardcover editions, and we're delighted that The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is chosen to be one of them. Available from 5th November, it will feature alongside landmark titles such as East of Eden (John Steinbeck), In Cold Blood (Truman Capote) and To The Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf). Click here to see the full series.
Considered John le Carré's most iconic novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was written in a matter of weeks and published in 1963. In a foreword to an earlier edition, John le Carré wrote:
'It was the Berlin Wall that had got me going, of course: I had flown from Bonn to take a look at it as soon as it started going up ... the Wall was perfect theatre as well as a perfect symbol of the monstrosity of ideology gone mad ... And the Wall stayed up. It was strengthened and heightened. It was protected by mined strips and earth brushed so fine you could trace a rabbit's paws across it. Occasionally someone climbed over it or crashed through it or dug under it, or made himself a glider and flew over it. There is a whole long history of tales of derring-do, and all those men and women who succeeded in escaping were heroes, perhaps because they were so few, certainly because they were so brave.'
Sixty years later, it remains a powerful novel, and the book that secured John le Carré his worldwide reputation.
To order your collectible Twentieth-Century Classic edition, please click here.