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Summary
Author Notes
David John Moore Cornwell was born in Poole, Dorsetshire, England in 1931. He attended Bern University in Switzerland from 1948-49 and later completed a B.A. at Lincoln College, Oxford. He taught at Eton from 1956-58 and was a member of the British Foreign Service from 1959 to 1964.
He writes espionage thrillers under the pseudonym John le Carré. The pseudonym was necessary when he began writing, in the early 1960s because, at that time, he held a diplomatic position with the British Foreign Office and was not allowed to publish under his own name. When his third book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became a worldwide bestseller in 1964, he left the foreign service to write full time. His other works include Call for the Dead; A Murder of Quality; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People.
He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1986 and the Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association in 1988. In 2011 he accepted the Goethe Medal. And in 2020, he accepted the Olof Palme Prize. Ten of his books have been adapted for television and motion pictures including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Russia House, The Constant Gardener, A Most Wanted Man, and Our Kind of Traitor.
Le Carré's memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from my Life, became a New York Times bestseller in 2016. In 2019, he published a spy thriller, Agent Running in the Field.
John Le Carré died on December 12, 2020 from pneumonia at the age of 89.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller le Carr? (The Constant Gardener) brings a light touch to his 20th novel, the engrossing tale of an idealistic and na?ve British interpreter, Bruno "Salvo" Salvador. The 29-year-old Congo native's mixed parentage puts him in a tentative position in society, despite his being married to an attractive upper-class white Englishwoman, who's a celebrity journalist. Salvo's genius with languages has led to steady work from a variety of employers, including covert assignments from shadowy government entities. One such job enmeshes the interpreter in an ambitious scheme to finally bring stability to the much victimized Congo, and Salvo's personal stake in the outcome tests his professionalism and ethics. Amid the bursts of humor, le Carr? convincingly conveys his empathy for the African nation and his cynicism at its would-be saviors, both home-grown patriots and global powers seeking to impose democracy on a failed state. Especially impressive is the character of Salvo, who's a far cry from the author's typical protagonist but is just as plausible. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
When spies fought spies in the early le Carre novels, there were no real winners, but there was a sense that one system was better than the other. In later le Carre, however, individuals are pitted against institutions, and the institutions--each evil in its own way--always win. Le Carre's new heroes, unlike the melancholy George Smiley, are usually naive. This time the naif is an interpreter, Bruno "Salvo" Salvador, born in Eastern Congo of a white father and a black mother, both victims of African civil war. Salvo has remade himself as a British gentleman and serves his country by interpreting transcripts for the secret service. But now he's been promoted to the big leagues, live interpretation at an off-the-radar conference involving three African warlords and a much-revered Congo leader. Ostensibly, the British are helping put the revered leader in power, but, in fact, as Salvo soon learns, the real goal is very different: steal the mineral wealth of the region while establishing a puppet government--"democracy at the end of a gun barrel." Salvo and his lover, a Congolese nurse, are determined to thwart the planned coup, but they have little grasp of what they're up against. The opening half of this novel is a bit static--the dynamics of multilingual interpretation are difficult to convey in print--but the power of the human drama takes hold toward the end. As in The Constant Gardner 0 (2000) and Absolute Friends0 (2003), le Carre's belief in the worth of individual human lives remains strong, even as his despair grows over the prospect of governments ever being a force for good. --Bill Ott Copyright 2006 Booklist
Guardian Review
Bruno Salvador, known to all as "Salvo", is a linguistic prodigy who has mastered all the least-known tongues of the multilingual eastern Congo. Salvo is a hybrid, the love-child of a Roman Catholic priest and the daughter of a Congolese chief, and a troubling mix of white and black, of Africa and Europe. With his mother a mystery and his father a shadowy memory, young Salvo is the embarrassing fleshly evidence of Catholic celibacy led astray. He has spent his life in hiding, looking for a home. Now trapped by a snobby wife on a top tabloid who married him for his capacity to dismay her even snobbier parents, Salvo is ripe for recruitment - and it so happens that the British Secret Service needs his language skills. Salvo comes as a gift to the avuncular Mr Anderson, his controller in one of those hidden eyries that John le Carre creates for his spies. Though this time Le Carreland is not as familiar as it might at first seem. Anderson is a marvellous creation; a pillar of the Sevenoaks Chorale Society, a spymaster with ruthless yet Rotarian values whose means of using and abusing the hapless Salvo are both more kindly, and more cruel, than those of his old mentor Brother Michael, who wasn't above dishing out a bit of fondling along with his fond advice. Anderson puts Salvo to work in "the chat- room", a secret listening post from where he eavesdrops on targets around Africa. Salvo is one of the most beguiling characters Le Carre has teased into life. He desires, simply, to do good; but his bosses are all for doing business. Salvo also considers himself a patriot, a true blue Britisher who dreams of serving "our great nation". In his endearing, slightly ponderous innocence he is a kind of Jeeves figure in a world of homicidal Bertie Woosters. The Mission Song is the story of Salvo's betrayal and of his slow awakening to the bitter truth of blood and business as usual. It also attacks with gusto the deadly greed of those who have ripped off Salvo's country. The Congo is vast, rich and beautiful, and it has been the theatre of incessant wars, secessions, and massacres ever since independence. Reasonable estimates say that these wars have cost around four million lives since 1998. Indeed, the Congo resembles less a country than a blood-stained trading floor where the traders wave Kalashnikovs or pangas. The eastern Congo, that beautiful, lethal region around Goma and Bukavu, continues to bleed under the assaults of local warlords, tribal enmities and vengeful neighbours from Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Add to this lethal mix "investors" and power brokers from South Africa, Europe, and America who would buy and sell themselves, and/or their mothers, for a slice of the action, and you have a treasure-house of lies, spies and percentage takers. Not all that much has changed, then, since Joseph Conrad wrote of its despoliation with such cold fury. This is very much a book shaped and fuelled by anger, but the anger has been given a perfect foil in the imperturbable, gentle, unstoppable Salvo. Salvo's fate is to be exploited, suborned and discarded, just as his native Congo has been. But it's from the droll gravity of this hybrid, neither quite black or white - the "zebra", as someone calls him - that the novel draws its strength and its charm. This is a gentle satire, at times a spoof, about unspeakable things. At the heart of the book is a coup run by a bunch of former public school bundu-bashers. It is to be a sensible coup, a reasonable coup, a kindly coup. As the coup leader tells the hapless Salvo, the Congo has been bleeding to death for centuries. "Fucked by the Arab slavers, fucked by their fellow Africans, fucked by the United Nations, the CIA, the Christians, the Belgians, the French, the Brits, the Rwandans, the diamond companies, the gold companies, half the world's carpet- baggers, their own government in Kinshasa and any minute now they're going to be fucked by the oil companies . . . Time they had a break, and we're the boys to give it to 'em." The plan is to step in and install a visionary leader, and deliver democracy from the barrel of a gun. It is a preposterous plot - until you remember how coups in Africa often look like opera bouffe , but with real blood. Indeed, as a model for the killer- clown soldiers whom Salvo must out-manoeuvre, Le Carre seems to have another putsch in mind. In 2004, a group of Old Etonians, former SAS soldiers and muscular South African mercenaries, with supporters ranging from Mark Thatcher to other political figures abroad, and with the connivance of the British and Spanish secret services, planned an assault on Equatorial Guinea, a country even more unhappy, if that is possible, than the Congo. The idea was to overthrow a man-eating tyrant named Obiang Nguema and install a puppet president, who would then turn over a large slice of the country's considerable oil revenues to what was known as "the Syndicate". This is also the name of the outfit who plan the coup in The Mission Song . And in their swagger and their stupefying greed, Le Carre depicts the sort of sweet reason that is to be found in Europeans whom Africa has sent barking mad. But what makes The Mission Song most impressive is Le Carre's refusal to let anyone get away with anything. His targets are the thievery and bloodshed that hide beneath the usual pieties about peace and freedom. Western machinations need willing partners. Le Carre hits the foreign suits as hard as the indigenous African tunics who come together to ruin another lovely piece of the continent. The Mission Song is a light-hearted tragedy, a strangely sunny tale of despair in which a Congolese Candide with nothing but his unassailable innocence somehow sees it through. Christopher Hope's My Mother's Lovers is published by Atlantic. To order The Mission Song for pounds 16.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/ bookshop Caption: article-lecarre.1 Bruno Salvador, known to all as "Salvo", is a linguistic prodigy who has mastered all the least-known tongues of the multilingual eastern Congo. Salvo is a hybrid, the love-child of a Roman Catholic priest and the daughter of a Congolese chief, and a troubling mix of white and black, of Africa and Europe. With his mother a mystery and his father a shadowy memory, young Salvo is the embarrassing fleshly evidence of Catholic celibacy led astray. He has spent his life in hiding, looking for a home. Now trapped by a snobby wife on a top tabloid who married him for his capacity to dismay her even snobbier parents, Salvo is ripe for recruitment - and it so happens that the British Secret Service needs his language skills. The plan is to step in and install a visionary leader, and deliver democracy from the barrel of a gun. It is a preposterous plot - until you remember how coups in Africa often look like opera bouffe , but with real blood. Indeed, as a model for the killer- clown soldiers whom Salvo must out-manoeuvre, [John le Carre] seems to have another putsch in mind. In 2004, a group of Old Etonians, former SAS soldiers and muscular South African mercenaries, with supporters ranging from Mark Thatcher to other political figures abroad, and with the connivance of the British and Spanish secret services, planned an assault on Equatorial Guinea, a country even more unhappy, if that is possible, than the Congo. The idea was to overthrow a man-eating tyrant named Obiang Nguema and install a puppet president, who would then turn over a large slice of the country's considerable oil revenues to what was known as "the Syndicate". This is also the name of the outfit who plan the coup in The Mission Song . And in their swagger and their stupefying greed, Le Carre depicts the sort of sweet reason that is to be found in Europeans whom Africa has sent barking mad. - Christopher Hope.
Kirkus Review
A half-British, half-Congolese interpreter unwittingly finds himself in the middle of a political struggle between two countries. The life of the middleman can be exciting and dangerous. Bruno "Salvo" Salvador, the offspring of a British missionary and a Congolese village chief's daughter, is an interpreter skilled in African dialects and in demand by London corporations and government agencies alike. His life is a comfortable one, but like any good le Carré character, Salvo is far from satisfied. Straight hair and tan skin cannot completely disguise his heritage, and he admits that there are benefits to "passing." Though married to a well-known tabloid journalist from an important family, Salvo is also having an affair with Hannah, a Congolese nurse. Pulled from a celebration for his wife by the mysterious Mr. Anderson, Salvo finds himself changing clothes and changing roles. A government client wants Salvo to serve as a field intelligence agent. Whisked from a black-tie party at Canary Wharf, Salvo hops a plane to a remote island. His surprise assignment: interpret for a group of African nationals who may or may not be plotting to overthrow the Congolese government with the help of a secretive alliance. The failure of colonialism, the corrupt influence of foreign interests in Africa and the evils inherent in man are all on display here. Metaphors abound, both in deeds and words, and le Carré maintains a tight, three-act plot. Readers will delight in his jaundiced view of affairs of state. Another fine work of intrigue from a skilled interpreter of all things topical. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
(See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/06) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
