Absolute Friends
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Narrated by:
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John le Carré
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By:
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John le Carré
About this listen
Today, Mundy is a down-at-heel tour guide in southern Germany, dodging creditors, supporting a new family, and keeping an eye out for trouble while in spare moments vigorously questioning the actions of the country he once bravely served.
And trouble finds him, as it has before, in the shape of his old German student friend, radical, and one-time fellow spy, the crippled Sasha, seeker after absolutes, dreamer, and chaos addict.
After years of trawling the Middle East and Asia as an itinerant university lecturer, Sasha has yet again discovered the true, the only, answer to life, this time in the form of a mysterious billionaire philanthropist named Dimitri. Thanks to Dimitri, both Mundy and Sasha will find a path out of poverty, and with it their chance to change a world that both believe is going to the devil. Or will they?
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Critic reviews
"John le Carre never, ever phones it in.... He's an old pro with the ardent heart of an amateur, which is why...he is still capable of producing a novel as odd, as ungainly, and as compelling as Absolute Friends.... Fans...will be happy to learn that he returns here to his old cold war stomping grounds." (The New York Times Book Review)
"Seamless abridgement. No one reads le Carre better than le Carre. His nuances, accents, and inflections are as brilliantly precise as his prose." (Publishers Weekly)
"Le Carre brings his superb reading talents - sonorous, cultured voice; gift for accents; deft expressiveness - to the story of Ted Mundy, a fumbling, well-meaning Brit.... He is simply one of the best author readers there is." (AudioFile)
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Dreamers of the Day
- A Novel
- By: Mary Doria Russell
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as an historic Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions - and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie - enters into the company of the historic luminaries.
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Little Big Woman
- By W.Denis on 10-02-08
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Sign of the Cross: A Collins-Burke Mystery, Book 1
- By: Anne Emery
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Monty Collins is a sharp-tongued public defender who just wants to represent an upstanding character for a change. A priest with something to hide isn't quite what he had hoped for, but when the literate, arrogant, and tight-lipped Father Brennan Burke is implicated in the strange murder of a young woman, Monty doesn't just take the case - the case takes him. When Burke won't come clean, Monty is forced to play private detective, traveling into his client's past. Things look good for the case until another body is found....
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Hybrid Mystery
- By connie on 07-31-12
By: Anne Emery
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The Ghost Writer
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: Roger Rees
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Adam Lang has been Britain’s longest serving—and most controversial—prime minister of the last half century. As pressure mounts for Lang to complete this memoirs, he hires a professional ghostwriter to finish the book. As he sets to work, the ghostwriter discovers many more secrets than Lang intends to reveal, secrets with the power to alter world politics - secrets with the power to kill.
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Too close to the truth?
- By carl801 on 11-24-07
By: Robert Harris
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Put Out More Flags
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Upper-class scoundrel Basil Seal, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, creates havoc wherever he goes, much to the despair of the three women in his life - his sister, his mother, and his mistress. When Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany, it seems the perfect opportunity for more action and adventure. So Basil follows the call to arms and sets forth to enjoy his finest hour - as a war hero. Basil's instincts for self-preservation come to the fore as he insinuates himself into the Ministry of Information and a little-known section of Military Security.
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Wickedly Funny
- By Chelz on 07-25-19
By: Evelyn Waugh
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Triple
- A Novel
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: Raza Jaffrey
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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As Egypt comes closer and closer to developing a nuclear bomb, the Mossad’s number one Israeli agent is given an impossible mission: to beat the Arabs in the nuclear arms race by finding and stealing two hundred tons of uranium. The world’s balance of power will shift. And the Mossad, the KGB, the Egyptians, and Fedayeen terrorists will play out the final, violent moves in this devastating game where the price of failure is a nuclear holocaust....
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Triple poorly performed
- By Jpop on 03-13-21
By: Ken Follett
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Mrs Queen Takes the Train
- By: William Kuhn
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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An absolute delight of a debut novel by William Kuhn - author of Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books - Mrs Queen Takes the Train wittily imagines the kerfuffle that transpires when a bored Queen Elizabeth strolls out of the palace in search of a little fun, leaving behind a desperate team of courtiers who must find the missing Windsor before a national scandal erupts.
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Can't believe how much I loved this story
- By analyzethis on 03-10-13
By: William Kuhn
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The Good Liar
- A Novel
- By: Nicholas Searle
- Narrated by: Matthew Brenher
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Veteran con artist Roy spots an obvious easy mark when he meets Betty, a wealthy widow, online. In no time at all, he's moved into Betty's lovely cottage and is preparing to accompany her on a romantic trip to Europe. Betty's grandson disapproves of their blossoming relationship, but Roy is sure this scheme will be a success. He knows what he's doing. As this remarkable feat of storytelling weaves together Roy's and Betty's futures, it also unwinds their pasts.
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Hope the movie is better than the book?
- By S. Smith on 10-17-19
By: Nicholas Searle
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Babylon Berlin
- Gereon Rath, Book 1
- By: Volker Kutscher
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Berlin, 1929. Detective Inspector Rath was a successful career officer in the Cologne Homicide Division before a shooting incident in which he inadvertently killed a man. He has been transferred to the vice squad in Berlin, a job he detests even though he finds a new friend in his boss, Chief Inspector Wolter. There is seething unrest in the city, and the Commissioner of Police has ordered the vice squad to ruthlessly enforce the ban on May Day demonstrations.
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It's no Bernie Gunther Mystery ...
- By Brian English on 01-28-18
By: Volker Kutscher
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Hornet Flight
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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It's June 1941, and the low point of the war. England throws wave after wave of RAF bombers across the Channel, but somehow the Luftwaffe is able to shoot them down at will. The skies, indeed, the war itself seem to belong to Hitler.
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An Outstanding Spy Novel
- By C. McCoy on 03-13-05
By: Ken Follett
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Bend Sinister
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America, and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.
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A fantastic fairytale of fascism
- By Darwin8u on 12-12-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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I haven't enjoyed a tale this much in many listens
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Le Carre's Panama is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption. It is also the country which on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal.
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Not one of Le Carré's best
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Only a tease, a taunt of le Carré's brilliance
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I haven't enjoyed a tale this much in many listens
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Fascinating, angry and worldly-wise spy fiction
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Le Carre's Panama is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption. It is also the country which on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal.
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Not one of Le Carré's best
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The Mission Song
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Abandoned by his parents, Bruno Salvador has long looked for guidance. He found it in Mr. Anderson of British Intelligence. Working for Anderson in a clandestine facility, Salvo (as he's known) translates intercepted phone calls, bugged recordings, and snatched voice-mail messages. When Anderson sends him to a mysterious island to interpret during a secret conference, Bruno thinks he is helping Britain--but then he hears something he should not have.
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Only a tease, a taunt of le Carré's brilliance
- By Darwin8u on 03-24-15
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The Pigeon Tunnel
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From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels.
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After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the death, he begins his own investigation, meeting Fennan's widow to find out what led him to such desperation. On the very day Smiley is ordered off the enquiry he receives an urgent letter from the dead man. Do the East Germans - and their agents - know more about this man's death than the Circus previously imagined?
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The Constant Gardener
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Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, John le Carré's new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's much older husband, Justin, a career diplomat at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive.
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Greatest love story of the last fifty years
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The Night Manager
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John le Carré, the legendary author of sophisticated spy thrillers, is at the top of his game in this classic novel of a world in chaos. With the Cold War over, a new era of espionage has begun. In the power vacuum left by the Soviet Union, arms dealers and drug smugglers have risen to immense influence and wealth. The sinister master of them all is Richard Onslow Roper, the charming, ruthless Englishman whose operation seems untouchable.
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Good book. Get the Michael Jayston version instead
- By David Schafer on 07-28-16
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Our Game & Absolute Friends (Abridged)
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With the Cold War fought and won, British spymaster Tim Cranmer accepts early retirement to rural England and a new life with his alluring young mistress, Emma. But when both Emma and Cranmer's star double agent and lifelong rival, Larry Pettifer, disappears, Cranmer is suddenly on the run, searching for his brilliant protégé, desperately eluding his former colleagues, in a frantic journey across Europe and into the lawless, battered landscapes of Moscow and Southern Russia, to save whatever of his life he has left.
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Engaging but often hard to follow
- By m. bryant on 01-21-23
By: John le Carré
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John le Carré Value Collection
- Tailor of Panama, Our Game, and Night Manager
- By: John le Carré
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Night Manager: Enter the new world of post-Cold War espionage. Penetrate the secret world of ruthless arms dealers and drug smugglers who have risen to unthinkable power and wealth. Our Game: With the Cold War fought and won, British spymaster Tim Cranmer accepts early retirement to rural England and a new life with his alluring young mistress, Emma.... Tailor of Panama: Le Carre's Panama is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption. It is also the country which on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal.
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you want to know what I think?
- By Anniebligh on 11-24-14
By: John le Carré
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Agent Running in the Field
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Overall
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Performance
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Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie.
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Who writes “unlistenable etc. “
- By Thomas on 11-02-19
By: John le Carré
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Silverview
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
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- Unabridged
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Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian’s evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian’s family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise.
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Le Carré's SILVERVIEW brings him and us back home
- By Close Listener on 10-14-21
By: John le Carré
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A Private Spy
- The Letters of John le Carré
- By: John le Carré, Tim Cornwell - editor
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- Unabridged
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The never-before-seen correspondence of John le Carré, one of the most important novelists of our generation, is collected in this beautiful volume. During his lifetime, le Carré wrote numerous letters to writers, spies, politicians, artists, actors and public figures. This collection is a treasure trove, revealing the late author's humor, generosity, and wit—a side of him many listeners have not previously seen.
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Truly engrossing from start to finish
- By Dan on 01-31-23
By: John le Carré, and others
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Little Drummer Girl and Other Stories
- By: John le Carré
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The Little Drummer Girl (Abridged): Charlie, a brilliant and beautiful young actress, is lured into 'the theatre of the real' by an Israeli intelligence officer. Forced to play her ultimate role, she is plunged into a deceptive and delicate trap set to ensnare an elusive Palestinian terrorist. A Perfect Spy (Abridged): Magnus Pym, ranking diplomat, has vanished, believed defected. The chase is on: for a missing husband, a devoted father and a secret agent. Pym’s life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets.
By: John le Carré
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Other George Smiley Stories
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
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Call for the Dead (Abridged): George Smiley had liked the man and now the man was dead. But why? Fennan was dead with a note by his body saying his career was finished and he couldn’t go on. Smiley decides to investigate – only to uncover a murderous conspiracy with its roots in his own secret wartime past. A Murder of Quality (Abridged): Miss Ailsa Brimley is in a quandary. She's received a peculiar letter from Mrs Stella Rode, saying that she fears her husband is trying to kill her.
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PerfectStoryteller with Perfect Narrator
- By Steve on 07-02-22
By: John le Carré
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The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Original Recording
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The complete collection of acclaimed BBC Radio dramas based on John le Carré's best-selling novels, starring Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, thrilling spy novels.
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good reading but can't navigate
- By RB Vancouver on 01-07-17
By: John le Carré
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Karla's Choice
- A John le Carré Novel
- By: Nick Harkaway
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale, Nick Harkaway
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West’s spy war against the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only for a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumor that George Smiley might almost be happy. But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Szusanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead.
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Perfect in every way
- By Amazon Customer on 11-17-24
By: Nick Harkaway
What listeners say about Absolute Friends
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Roger
- 04-14-07
Classical Le Carre
This book is read by the author who not only displays is understanding of the book, but handles the different voices perfectly. He is nothing like other spy thriller writers; he's much, much better. Also recommend his newest book Mission Song
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Overall
- Ann
- 02-03-04
Le Carre has a point of view
I suppose John Le Carre could write a bad book. I just never have read one. He also is a superior reader and/or actor.
What seems to be different about "Absolute Friends" is that instead of world- weary agents with murky allegiances more contingent on place of birth and chance, this book, in the end, has a passionate point of view. One that many fans of Le Carre may disagree with. Well, I can personally read about spies without becoming one. Highly recommended.
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24 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Amazon Customer
- 05-04-04
Le Carre in Top Form
This writer never disappoints me. His emphasis on character development and innovative, well-researched plots pays dividends for the reader. This novel covers a period in the lives of its protagonists from the 60's right up to today (and I mean right now).
The main character is a particularly poignant example of the offspring of declining British Empire. Le Carre maintained my interest with vivid portraits of British and German counterculture youth of the 60's. And, as always, he demonstrates the ultimate cynicism and folly of the practitioners of the spy games of the Twentieth Century.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- John
- 02-14-04
The Master is Back
I have never enjoyed an audio book more! This is a magnificent and timely tale reminiscent of A Small Town in Germany or Le Carre's other earlier works. It is deeply rooted in the cold war, yet quite contemporary, bridging the gap from the Berlin Wall to the current conflict in Baghdad.
The abridged version no doubt comes at the cost of some of the protagonist's more introspective self-examination, though the characters remain complex, human and compelling. And what a treat to have the author narrating. His reading adds a great deal to the authenticity and enjoyment of the novel.
Despite passages such as:
"The easiest and cheapest trick for any leader is to take his country to war on false pretenses," spoken by the book?s hero Mundy, Le Carre is quite even handed in his disdain for the entire cast of global players.
As with so many of Le Carre's imperfect characters, our "perfect friends" follow their highest ideals into the self serving world of political intrigue and the seedy realities of global greed. For those readers who shallowly declare that the book is an indictment on the West, listen more closely. It is an indictment on the human condition which repeatedly demonstrates its inability to translate our shared ideals into a political system that reflects those ideals.
All in all, an absolute little truffle of a spy book as engaging and satisfying as one could hope for from the greatest writer of the genre.
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17 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Glenn
- 01-10-15
Ending was the best
I was a bit confused by the characters and their loyalties throughout the story but at the end you I warned about the media who often gets it wrong.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- FrannyG
- 02-08-24
My Least Favorite LeCarre
This book was fairly sad and depressing but it was a great performance by the author.
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Overall
- Tim
- 03-25-04
The Spy Who Came In (as if by Graham Green)
All of Lecarre is good, some excellent. This one is superb. This novel of the aging of friendship would stand on its own, even without the espionage and the politics. With them, it is a well plotted and twisting suspense story that forms the framework for a thoughtful meditation on how adults (as opposed to adolescents) evolve as friends, even though they change. Read it for either book, and you'll get the other as a bonus.
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6 people found this helpful
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- MND42
- 11-01-20
More to this book than initially meets the eye
The layers in this book are thought provoking ans much appreciated.
What a gift to hear the book read by the author himself.
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- Stevon
- 05-28-07
Friends
I bought this as a $9.95 daily special. It was an interesting listen but not a thriller that I couoldn't put down. I would rather have listened to the unabridged version, I wasn't even paying attention when I bought it. But, it had a long, winding road kind of plot that eventually got to where it was going.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Michael M. Kraus
- 01-25-21
A new direction for John le Carre.
This book was a surprise to me. I bought it because I’ve found John le Carre’ to be a writer who has always been worth my time.
This book is no exception. The message that Absolute Friends has is especially important given the state of the world today. This work is John’s wake up call to his readers. It says look at what is happening.
The narration is excellent. He wrote it and he reads it wonderfully.
I am going to recommend this book to friends and family.
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2 people found this helpful