The Pigeon Tunnel, John le Carre
The Pigeon Tunnel, John le Carre
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The Pigeon Tunnel
Stories from My Life

Bestseller

Author: John le Carré

Narrator: John le Carré

Unabridged: 11 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 09/06/2016

Synopsis

DON’T MISS THE PIGEON TUNNEL DOCUMENTARY—IN SELECT THEATERS AND STREAMING ON AppleTV+ OCTOBER 20TH!

“Recounted with the storytelling élan of a master raconteur—by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

The New York Times bestselling memoir from John le Carré, the legendary author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; and The Night Manager, now an Emmy-nominated television series starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. 

From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth; visiting Rwanda’s museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide; celebrating New Year’s Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command; interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev; listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov; meeting with two former heads of the KGB; watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People; or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.

Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer’s journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.

About John le Carre

Fiction imitating real life seems to be an apt mantra for British born author, David John Moore Cornwell, or his pen name, John le Carre'. He had a very "un-normal" childhood, having been abandoned by his mother when he was five years old, and his father made and lost fortunes several times by using tricks and schemes, and even landed in jail for insurance fraud. le Carre' was reunited with the mother he never knew when he was 21. Unbeknownst to him, he developed his fascination with secret lives from his observation of his father's unsavory lifestyle.

le Carre' studied and received a degree in modern languages after a few "bumps in the road" along the way. He joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army stationed in Allied-occupied Austria, serving as a German language interrogator, then worked covertly for the British Secret Service, M-15 as a spy to detect Soviet agents. He taught at Eton College while he was an M-15 officer. He ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephones, and supervised break-ins. He was encouraged to write by other authors, writing his first novel, Call for the Dead in 1961. In 1960, he had transferred to M-16, the foreign intelligence service. His cover for that position was Secretary of the British Embassy at Bonn, and later Hamburg. It was at that time that he wrote, A Murder of Quality, and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. He assumed his pen name when he wrote, since officers were forbidden to publish in their own names.

le Carre's novels include: The Looking Glass, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Smiley's People, The Little Drummer Girl, The Night Manager, The Tailor of Panama, The Constant Gardner, A Most Wanted Man, and Our Kind of Traitor. All of the John le Carre' novels were adapted for film or television.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Will on October 23, 2024

I’m a liar…born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist. As a maker of fictions, I invent versions of myself, never the real thing, if it exists. …We all reinvent our pasts…but writers are in a class of their own. Even when they kno......more

Goodreads review by Trish on February 08, 2017

These stories are pure enjoyment. David Cornwell makes up for all those years he refused interviews, answering questions we never got to ask. If he doesn’t quite “bare all,” within are things we may have felt strongly about at the time, but now excite us just for the pleasure of hearing a different......more

Goodreads review by H (no longer expecting notifications) Balikov on July 14, 2017

David Cornwell, writing as John le Carré, is one of the most celebrated authors of espionage novels. This is essentially a memoir and I listened to the audio book, which was read by le Carré. I understand that there is some controversy about this book. Some say that the author has undercut Adam Sism......more

Quotes

One of the NP99: National Post’s best books of 2016

“Recounted with the storytelling élan of a master raconteur — by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“An illuminating, self-effacing and pleasurable inquiry into le Carré’s creative process, offering globe-spanning thrills of a different, but no less captivating kind than those associated with the novels.” —USA Today
 
“[Le Carré] is a polished raconteur, with an actor’s protean self-presentation, gifts of pace and timing, aptitude for entrances and exits.” —Wall Street Journal

“This incisive and witty memoir, by the man who long ago set the gold standard for modern espionage novelists, is a glittering treasure chest of great stories.” —The Seattle Times, "The Best Books of 2016"

“The Pigeon Tunnel is the literary equivalent of a long night spent in the company of a grand storyteller, who has saved up a lifetime of his best tales to share with you over several rounds of fine scotch. The collection leaves the impression of a man who has gone to impossible lengths for his words, bringing the farthest reaches of the globe, some of its cruelest inhabitants, and a small handful of genuine heroes back home for all of us.”—Entertainment Weekly

“The name ‘John le Carré’ attracts the audience, but it’s David Cornwell confiding in us here, as if over dinner, then chatting long into the evening over snifters of brandy, or, as he unspools memories of Russia, glasses of vodka.” —Associated Press

“The Pigeon Tunnel contains what le Carré calls 'tiny bits of history caught in flagrante,' all of them borrowed from the lived experience of a novelist whose career has more closely resembled that of a war correspondent than a literary celebrity....Spies are le Carré’s preferred subject, but through them he grapples with larger human truths that transcend the cloak-and-dagger underworld.” —The American Scholar

"Looking back on a life rich enough to spawn multiple globe-spanning novels...le Carré showcases his grand, cinematic sense of place and...the ineffable quality that defines a professional raconteur....The inviting, drinks-beside-the-fire style from a master of the craft never overtakes the details of le Carré's remarkable life or his strong insider's opinions on issues of geopolitical import since World War II." —Library Journal, starred review

“Always insightful, frequently charming, and sometimes sobering, the memorable tales told by master storyteller le Carré about his life will surely delight both longtime fans and newcomers.” —Publishers Weekly
 
"For all the cinematic glamour of le Carré's experiences, reflections on the workaday realities of fiction writing may provide the most engaging aspect of this colorful valediction. A satisfying recollection of a literary life well-lived.” —Kirkus Reviews

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