| A Small Town in Germany | |
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1st edition |
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| Author(s) | John le Carré |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Thriller novel |
| Publisher | William Heinemann |
| Publication date | October 1968 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 304 pp (hardcover first edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-434-10930-4 (hardcover first edition) |
| OCLC Number | 887880 |
| Dewey Decimal | 823/.9/14 |
| LC Classification | PZ4.L4526 Sm PR6062.E33 |
| Preceded by | The Looking-Glass War |
| Followed by | The Naïve and Sentimental Lover |
A Small Town In Germany is a 1968 espionage novel by British author John le Carré. It is set against a background of concern that former Nazis were returning to positions of power in West Germany.
Contents |
The novel concerns the search for an official at the British Embassy in Bonn who has gone missing with secret files.
Bonn is the eponymous small town, chosen as West Germany's capital after World War II mainly due to the advocacy of Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of West Germany after World War II, who came from the area.
A Small Town in Germany occurs in the late 1960s, in Bonn, the capital of West Germany. From London, Alan Turner, of the British Foreign Office, arrives to investigate the disappearance of Leo Harting, a minor British Embassy officer; moreover, secret files have disappeared with him. The embassy's security chief, Rawley Bradfield, is hostile to Turner's investigation. Despite that, he is dinner party host to Turner and Ludwig Siebkron, head of the German Interior Ministry; the latter is close to industrialist Klaus Karfeld, who is successfully building his new political party.
Initially, Turner suspects Leo Harting is a spy, but comes to grasp that Harting was secretly investigating Karfeld's Nazi career — as the war-time administrator of a laboratory that poisoned thirty-one half-Jews. In fact, Harting is hiding from Siebkron, and might assassinate Karfeld. To Turner's chagrin, Bradfield is unsympathetic to Harting's circumstance and uninterested in protecting him, because he considers him a criminal and a political embarrassment.
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