The Little Drummer Girl
by John Le Carre
- Used
- very good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- Seller
-
York, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Little Drummer Girl
FIRST EDITION
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON
1983
DESCRIPTION
Book measures 240mm x 155mm approximately.
Hardback book with dust jacket.
CONDITION
In very good condition. The book is strong and tight. The dust jacket is also in very good condition, with only a few minor creases to the upper edges. Some slight fading to spine. Some of the latter page edges show light foxing marks.
INTERESTING
David John Moore Cornwell (born 1931), better known by his pen name John le Carré, is a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works. Following the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author. Many of his books have been adapted for film or television.
In 1950, he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Allied-occupied Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West. In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he worked covertly for the British Security Service, MI5, spying on far-left groups for information about possible Soviet agents.
Most of Le Carré's books are spy stories set during the Cold War (1945–91) and portray British Intelligence agents as unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged more in psychological than physical drama. The novels emphasise the fallibility of Western democracy and of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of east–west moral equivalence. The recurring character George Smiley, who plays a central role in five novels was written as an "antidote" to James Bond, a character Le Carré called "an international gangster" rather than a spy and whom he felt should be excluded from the canon of espionage literature. In contrast, he intended Smiley, who is an overweight, bespectacled bureaucrat who uses cunning and manipulation to achieve his ends, as an accurate depiction of a spy.
The Little Drummer Girl title suggests a word play on the Christmas carol The Little Drummer Boy. The story follows the manipulations of Martin Kurtz, an Israeli spymaster who intends to kill Khalil, a Palestinian terrorist who is bombing Jewish-related targets in Europe, particularly Germany, and Charlie, an English actress and double agent working on behalf of the Israelis. Some reviewers described The Little Drummer Girl as transcending the spy novel genre. "The Little Drummer Girl is about spies", said William F. Buckley, writing in The New York Times, "as Madame Bovary is about adultery or Crime and Punishment about crime."
Synopsis
The Little Drummer Girl is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1983. The story follows the manipulations of Martin Kurtz, an Israeli spymaster who is trying to kill a Palestinian terrorist code-named 'Khalil', who is bombing Jewish related targets in Europe, particularly Germany, and the English actress Charlie, who becomes a double agent working on the behalf of the Israelis. The novel does not feature le Carré's most famous character George Smiley.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Melmoth Books (GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- MB0364
- Title
- The Little Drummer Girl
- Author
- John Le Carre
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st first
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Hodder and Stoughton
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1983
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
- Keywords
- Le Carre espionage
- Bookseller catalogs
- Espionage and Secret Service;
Terms of Sale
Melmoth Books
About the Seller
Melmoth Books
About Melmoth Books
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...