John le Carré’s son Nick Harkaway will bring back his father’s most famous character in a new novel.
Viking will publish Harkaway’s novel featuring George Smiley, the spy who figured in nine of le Carré’s books, next fall, the press announced in a news release. The book is still untitled.
Smiley, who in le Carré’s novels works for the British intelligence agency MI6 (“the Circus”), was introduced to readers in the 1961 novel Call for the Dead, and returned the following year in A Murder of Quality.
He appeared in some of le Carré’s most famous books, including The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The new novel will focus on Smiley’s career in the years in between the events of those two books.
Harkaway is the author of several previous novels, including The Gone-Away World, Tigerman, and Gnomon. He has also written two thrillers, The Price You Pay and Seven Demons, under the pen name Aidan Truhen.
In a statement, Harkaway said, “Smiley is woven into my life; Tinker Tailor was written in the two years after I was born and I grew up with the evolution of the Circus, so this is a deeply personal journey for me, and of course it’s a journey which has to feel right to the le Carré audience. It also seems as if we need the Smiley stories back now because they ask us the questions of the moment: what compassion do we owe to one another as human beings, and at what point does that compassion become more important than nation, law or duty?”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
