The Stasi

The spy who came back from retirement: Karla’s Choice, by Nick Harkaway, reviewed

From our UK edition

Publishing is a business. Authors are its brands and books its products. When, as sometimes happens, one of the bigger brands inconveniently dies or retires, there’s an understandable desire to keep the brand going and to attach its lucrative name to new products. And why not? If it’s done well, everyone benefits – publishers, readers and authors’ estates. In the past 60 years, there have been few bigger brands than the late John le Carré, so it’s no surprise to find a posthumous outing with the words ‘A John le Carré novel’ plastered over the cover. Its author, Le Carré’s youngest son Nick Harkaway, is a well-established novelist in his own right, albeit in a different genre. He served his apprenticeship by completing his father’s last book, Silverview (2021).

Digging it

Censorship is censorship, whether it is the firing of a libidinous cartoon skunk or the starting of yet another Satanic panic over music videos that don’t promote Christian dogma. But when an authoritarian, militarist government imposes the censorship, it is far worse, making “Cancel Culture” look like Champagne problems. Tunnel 29, a podcast that chronicles a harrowing and heroic story of an escape underneath the Berlin Wall, renders hyperbolic any comparison of Soviet censorship to current American censorship, be it left-wing or religious. You don’t have to dig an underground expressway to watch old episodes of Looney Tunes while refilling your now-vintage bottle of Aunt Jemima with new syrup.

tunnel