Latest news with #NickHarkaway
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ukraine war has reignited ‘cold war strategies', says John le Carré's son
Russia's war in Ukraine has reignited 'cold war strategies', according to the son of John le Carré, who announced that an adaptation of his father's classic novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is coming to the West End for the first time. Nick Harkaway, who published Karla's Choice last year, a sequel to the 1963 thriller, said the current geopolitical situation had echoes of the charged postwar period. 'With the conflicts that we're in, it just does feel as if all the cold war conversations and the underlying geopolitics of the cold war, all the strategic stuff, is still the same,' he said. 'It doesn't shift.' Asked what his father would have made of the state of world politics today, Harkaway said he would have been horrified. 'He was an optimist, he believed in people and that we could build a better world,' he said. 'All the books, to one degree or another, are about someone finding the courage to do something that will change things for the better. The implication is always that if we don't find that courage, we will spiral downwards.' The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was adapted shortly after its publication into a film starring Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, the titular spy who is convinced to go back into the field by the spymaster George Smiley. But it was not until last year's run at the Minerva theatre in Chichester that a Le Carré novel had been adapted for the stage. The play's director, David Eldridge, said the initial idea for the adaptation came at around the same time as the novichok poisoning in Salisbury, which raised the question of how a country reacts to such an attack. 'Should you respond in kind, so that you can defeat your enemy?' Eldridge said. 'But in doing so, do you compromise your value system?' The idea of where British intelligence services draw the line is one of the dominant themes of the story. As is the effect that spying has on Leamas, who is in a state of existential despair at the end of the novel. Some of the action takes place in East Germany, and Harkaway said the appearance of the Berlin wall – the dividing line across the city that fell in 1989 – as part of the stage set was a dramatic reminder of the period. 'We talk about modern relevance – well, this was a scar across the middle of Europe which existed for 40 years,' he said. 'When you see that up close, it's really powerful.' Leamas calls spies a 'squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives'. When Eldridge met Le Carré, before his death in 2020, the novelist told him 'not to get carried away with the idea that intelligence officers are a special breed in some way', repeatedly saying that they're just 'ordinary people'. Eldridge said his adaptation was true to that idea. The Guardian's Mark Lawson commented on the 'extreme moral ambiguity' of Smiley in the Chichester production as he battles with his Russian counterpart – and nemesis – the KGB's Karla. Lawson also praised Agnes O'Casey's performance as the librarian Liz Gold, who gets caught up in the brutal churn of spycraft. Eldridge said: 'The novel and the play constantly asks the audience whether it's worth it or not.' The Spy Who Came in from the Cold opens on 17 November at Soho Place and runs until 21 February
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway audiobook review – a new Smiley from le Carré's son
It is 1963 and, having retired from 'the Circus', spymaster George Smiley is looking forward to a trip abroad with his wife, Anne. But when a Soviet assassin has a sudden change of heart before murdering László Bánáti, a spy masquerading as a literary agent in London, Smiley finds himself back at work. He must find Bánáti and persuade him to become a British asset, a pursuit that leads him to an old foe. Dreamed up as the unflashy antithesis of James Bond, Smiley is, of course, the creation of the late John le Carré. But in Karla's Choice, he is brought to life by Nick Harkaway, Le Carré's youngest son. Harkaway, who also completed 2021's unfinished Silverview, writes in a style barely distinguishable from his father, save for some necessary tweaks – a faster pace and more believable female characters. Our narrator is the actor Simon Russell Beale, who previously played Le Carré's protagonist in a series of BBC radio plays. Russell Beale's performance here is fluent yet understated, his Smiley preternaturally calm even when visiting his wife in Vienna and being informed by the hotel concierge that she is busy with her husband. The audiobook also features a foreword written and narrated by Harkaway who acknowledges there will be fans who will deem his tackling Smiley as 'absurd hubris', despite Le Carré's wish that there should be more books after his death. 'My Smiley is my father's but he's also the Smiley we collectively inherit,' he notes. 'The job is to produce a volume … that must move you, hold on to you and leave you wanting more.' Job done. Available via Penguin Audio, 10hr 42 min Say EverythingIone Skye, HarperCollins, 8hr 38minA coming-of-age memoir by the actor and daughter of folk icon Donovan. Read by the author. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion ButcherJoyce Carol Oates, Fourth Estate, 13hr 11minA cast of narrators including Edoardo Ballerini and Amy Shiels read Oates's fictional biography of a 19th-century doctor who conducts brutal experiments on female patients at a lunatic asylum.
