A Most Wanted Man
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3.8 • 278 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Now a major film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, and Robin Wright—the acclaimed bestselling novel about spies in “The War on Terror.”
A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.
Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client’s survival becomes more important to her than her own career—or safety. In pursuit of Issa’s mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg.
Annabel, Issa, and Brue form an unlikely alliance—and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, sensing a sure kill in the “War on Terror,” the rival spies of Germany, England, and America converge upon the innocents.
Thrilling, compassionate, with characters you’ll never forget, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Legendary spy novelist John le Carré explores the European front of the war on terror in this powerfully gripping thriller. In Hamburg, Germany, a crusading lawyer, an aging Scottish banker, and a jaded intelligence agent are swept up in a shadowy struggle to determine the fate of Issa—a young Russian fugitive with a claim to a vast fortune and alleged radical ties. With masterful prose and peerless insight into the harsh realities of covert state power, le Carré illuminates murky shades of gray in the seemingly black-and-white struggle against terrorism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When boxer Melik Oktay and his mother, both Turkish Muslims living in Hamburg, take in a street person calling himself Issa at the start of this morally complex thriller from le Carr (The Mission Song), they set off a chain of events implicating intelligence agencies from three countries. Issa, who claims to be a Muslim medical student, is, in fact, a wanted terrorist and the son of Grigori Karpov, a Red Army colonel whose considerable assets are concealed in a mysterious portfolio at a Hamburg bank. Tommy Brue, a stereotypical flawed everyman caught up in the machinations of spies and counterspies, enters the plot when Issa's attorney seeks to claim these assets. The book works best in its depiction of the rivalries besetting even post-9/11 intelligence agencies that should be allies, but none of the characters is as memorable as George Smiley or Magnus Pym. Still, even a lesser le Carr effort is far above the common run of thrillers.
Customer Reviews
Very good.
I love the character development and the moral ambiguity and the ideas. All of which I can count on with JLC. This one seems to drag a bit slowly but still very compelling and well told. Worth reading. Love what he writes about PSH at the end!
A most wanted man
John le Carre is probably the best fiction spy novelist on the planet. However, after Smileys People, he was left to his own political predilections, which were mostly leftist. His books became less interesting although still brilliantly written
A Most wanted Man
Very exciting and relevant to today's situation. I thought that LaCarre did a great job of creating and forming the characters.