Bloomsbury To Publish Biography Of John Le Carré

Press Release -  22 Mar 2011

Adam Sisman is to write the definitive life of John le Carré (author photo by David Azzia for NYT). Bloomsbury plan to publish in 2014, half a century after the worldwide success of The Spy who came in from the Cold, which Graham Greene dubbed "the best spy story I have ever read."

Le Carré will provide Sisman with information and introductions, as well as access to his hitherto unseen private archive but he will have no control over the biography. Sisman will have a free hand, which is at the wish of both the biographer and his subject.

Sisman approached le Carré, whose real name is David Cornwell, last summer. Sisman says: "David Cornwell is a rich subject for a biographer. His writing is intensely personal, and permeated by strongly-held values. From the moment when his identity became public, readers around the world have speculated about the degree to which he has drawn on his own experiences in his fiction, in particular on his career with the intelligence services. His semi-autobiographical novel A Perfect Spy provided tantalising clues to his extraordinary childhood."

The book will deal openly with these subjects, and with Cornwell's personal life, including the difficulties that led to the breakdown of his first marriage, depicted in his novel The Naive and Sentimental Lover.

"I have admired and enjoyed David's work since I discovered him in my teens," Sisman continues, "and believe that his enormous commercial success has hindered recognition that he is writer of the highest quality, who will eventually be acknowledged as one of the finest British post-War novelists. Philip Roth rated le Carré's A Perfect Spy as "the best English novel since the war".

Le Carré's twenty-second novel, Our Kind of Traitor, was published in September 2010 by Penguin. Le Carré's agent is Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown.

Sisman has written four previous biographies, including Boswell's Presumptuous Task, which received a National Books Critics Circle award. His most recent book, a life of the historian and intelligence officer Hugh Trevor-Roper, was published in the UK in July 2010, and will be published in the US later this year. He is represented by Andrew Wylie.