FEDERICO VARESE, Professeur des Universités at the Centre d’Études Européennes et de Politique Comparée, Sciences Po, Paris, and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, sounds intellectually forbidding; but let that not put readers off this book, because, from 1994, when the late bestselling spy novelist John le Carré (David Cornwell) was researching his post-Soviet novel Our Game, Varese, an expert on the Russian mafia, was his collaborator and friend.
Varese has edited Tradecraft, a project from the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a place that not only lends its atmosphere to the classic TV adaptations of the Smiley books, but has become, posthumously, the holder of the author’s archive. Varese, in his Introduction, draws attention both to the detailed accuracy of le Carré’s locations, which is important for the novels’ place in the tradition of realism, and to their political dimension, calling them “among the very best political novels ever written”.
Varese provides a short passage of context at the beginning of each of the other contributors’ chapters. These discuss such matters as le Carré as a world writer (Elleke Boehmer and Steven Matthews), the background to the South-East Asian novel The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), the novelist’s insight into international relations (Andrea Ruggeri), and the ways in which the KGB itself viewed le Carré’s work and used it for its own ends (Andrei Soldatov).
Errol Morris and Hossein Amini write about filmmaking with the writer, Michela Wrong discusses a research trip to Rwanda and the eastern Congo, and there are contributions by Simon and Nicholas Cornwell, both of whom have been involved in adapting or continuing their father’s creative work.
This is a book for the serious fans, who will enjoy the 39 very well-reproduced colour photos of people and manuscripts, and may well decide to visit the free Bodleian exhibition (until 6 April next year) that the book accompanies.
Glyn Paflin is Deputy Editor of the Church Times.
Tradecraft: Writers on John le Carré
Federico Varese, editor
Bodleian Library Publishing £30
(978-1-85124-648-9)
Church Times Bookshop £27
