"What could have been a cloying hagiography or a lurid warts-and-all exposé is instead a balanced, focused and compelling study of a man of depth and individuality. This biography expertly shows how distance, distrust and even disillusionment have informed Mr le Carré and influenced his bestselling fiction." - The Economist on John Le Carre "In John le Carré: The Biography, Mr. Sisman creates an insightful and highly readable portrait of a writer and a man who has often been as elusive and enigmatic as his fictional heroes." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times on John Le Carre "Loose threads are what fascinate most about Adam Sisman's biography of David Cornwell, who at 84 still writes and publishes knotty, brainy thrillers under the pseudonym John le Carré.Best of all, Sisman provides aficionados of le Carré's fiction with canny assessments of, and inside information on all his written work." - USA Today on John Le Carre "Page-turning . Adam Sisman completes the task of showing us who [John le Carré] was--a minor spy who became a major novelist, whose most important agents in the field were the women he needed to love and then betray.

For le Carré, tradecraft was lovecraft. Much more than What Was Left Out, The Secret Life of John le Carré is not merely the conclusive homage to a compulsively fascinating character, but an insightful study into the biographical process itself. Even David Cornwell, the man who actually was John le Carré, would have saluted him." - Nicholas Shakespeare "A more rounded and less appealing picture of Cornwell--complex, vain, emotionally manipulative--emerges from this . book than before. But it does not diminish the literary and moral seriousness of le Carré's greatest novels about the secret world." - The Economist "A one-of-a-kind revisiting of a wondrously productive life lived at the expense of two wives and many lovers." - Kirkus Reviews "Revealing .

Future accounts of le Carré's life will have to wrestle with the bombshells dropped here." - Publishers Weekly "While there is plenty of tabloid-worthy material between its covers, the book is nonetheless complex and consequential . [it] is also a fascinating examination of the biographer's art that casts le Carre's life and writing in a fresh light." - The Washington Post "A deeply entertaining book . A determined and at times forensic attempt to set the record straight, detailing the full extent of what was kept from him, going to town on le Carré's obstructiveness and reality-softening, undermining various aspects of the le Carré legend and exposing the decades-long exercise in stage management that lay at its unexpectedly chilly heart." - The Spectator.