The Secret Pilgrim

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Title The Secret Pilgrim
First edition cover
First edition cover
Author John le Carré
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Series George Smiley
Genre(s) Spy Novel
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf (USA) & Hodder & Stoughton (UK)
Released January 1990
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 335 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN ISBN 0-394-58842-8 (first edition, hardback)

The Secret Pilgrim is the 1990 novel, told as a series of memoirs about the career of John le Carré's George Smiley, famous only within the 'Circus'. The memoirs, narrated by Ned, a former pupil of Smiley's, are retrospective accounts of Smiley's greatest untold cases.

[edit] Plot introduction

During the book, Ned revels silently in his memories of the quiet-spoken George Smiley as Smiley imparts his wisdom unto a class of newly recruited students at MI6 pausing only, to the secret delight of all present, to polish his spectacles on the fat end of his tie.

[edit] Blurb

The Berlin Wall is toppled, the Iron Curtain swept aside. The Secret Pilgrim is Ned, a decent, loval soldier of the Cold War. who has been in British Intelligence all his adult life. Now, approaching the end of his career, he is forced by the explosions of change to revisit his secret years. He illuminates the brave past and even braver present of George Smiley, his hero and mentor, who gives back to him the dangerous edge of memory that empowers him finally to frame the questions that have haunted him - and the world - for thirty years...



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