‘The Pigeon Tunnel’, John le Carr�’s memoir and his first work of non-fiction, is a thrilling journey into the worlds of his ‘secret sharers’ – the men and women, who inspired some of his most enthralling novels – and a testament to the author’s extraordinary engagement with the last half-century. The reader is swept along not just by the chilling winds of the Cold War or by the author’s frightening journeys into places of terrible violence but, most importantly, by the author’s inimitable voice. In this astonishing work we see our world, both public and private, through the eyes of one of this country’s greatest writers.
The Pigeon Tunnel
£9.99
1 in stock (can be backordered)
1 in stock (can be backordered)
Description
Penguin Books
Paperback
vii, 343pp
Penguin Books
198x129x25
Carr�, John Le Penguin Books DNC|DNBL1|JPSH Paperback 2017
Fascinating, important, pithy. Anyone interested in le Carr� and his significant contribution to the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries will want to read these engaging meanderings through his life and career.He has plenty to say about Kim Philby, the movie business, fellow spooks and Russian defectors, encounters with the great and good, and his intrepid travels to research his novels
Guardian – William Boyd
Vintage le Carr� … [he] remains a magician of plot and counter-plot, a master storyteller
Observer
John le Carr� is as recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen
Financial Times
When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carr� … they were a journey into the wider world … These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind
Aung San Suu Kyi
No other writer has charted – pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers – the public and secret histories of his times
Guardian
A smashing read
Wall Street Journal – Richard Davenport-Hines
Offers thrills of recognition as le Carr�'s archetypes spring to life… The 84-year old novelist discards extended narrative and writes in elegiac fragments with linking harmonies, like the late works of that other German Romantic, Beethoven
Financial Times – John Gapper
Exceptionally well-turned and enjoyable
Evening Standard – David Sexton
Grippingly written, it is revealing in ways the author never intended it to be
Sunday Telegraph
Cagey, clever, revealing
Daily Telegraph
le Carr� is a master of the art… fascinatingly readable
The Times
Frank and fascinating
Daily Express
The Pigeon Tunnel is a delight… a collection of highly polishes oddments from a life, assembled to entertain and inform…fabulously funny
Radio Times
A snapshot of a story that is, truly, as extraordinary as any of his fiction
Daily Mail
For me The Pigeon Tunnel just confirms the enigma… extremely humorous… at no point do I feel that I knew one tiny bit more than he wants me to know
Susanne Bier, director of The Night Manager
He has written an uproarious, darkly poignant and precious book
New Statesman – James Naughtie
A beautiful book. The great glory of it is it comes close to unlocking the central mystery of le Carr�
Tony Parsons
As enthralling as his fiction
Woman and Home
Le Carr� is such a good writer . . . Though urbane and detached, there is rage simmering not far below the surface of both le Carr� and his new book. But then, nothing, absolutely nothing, is what it seems
Daily Mail
A deeply personal and touching account of le Carr�'s life … it has undeniable power
Prospect
Explosive
Daily Mail
le Carr�'s The Pigeon Tunnel is exquisite
Hugh Laurie
I savoured the gravelly, quietly insistent voice of a master storyteller examining his own life
The Spectator – Michela Wrong
the entertaining recollections of a raconteur
Telegraph – Neil McCormick
Elusive and frank and witty by turns, the spy master gives away just as much of himself as he wants to in The Pigeon Tunnel, tracing the story of his life through his walk-on parts in the history and mythology of the cold war, and the shape-shifting discipline of his imagination
Guardian Biographies of the Year – Tim Adams
