Absolute friends

Absolute Friends is a superbly paced novel spanning fifty-six years, a theatrical masterstroke of tragicomic writing, and a savage fable of our times, almost of our hours.

The friends of the title are Ted Mundy, British soldier's son born 1947 in a shining new independent Pakistan, and Sasha, refugee son of an East German Lutheran pastor and his wife who have sought sanctuary in the West.

The two men meet first as students in riot-torn West Berlin of the late Sixties, again in the grimy looking-glass of Cold War espionage and, most terribly, in today's unipolar world of terror, counter-terror and the war of lies.

Deriving its scale from A Perfect Spy and its passion from The Constant Gardener, Le Carre's new novel presents us with magical writing, characters to delight, and a spellbinding story that enchants even as it challenges.