Some interrogations are conducted in order to elicit truth, others to elicit lies.
I was a latecomer to the works of John le Carré. Previous to The Little Drummer Girl (1983), I'd read, first, The Tailor of Panama (1996) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). Both of those (part of my travel reading program for, respectively Panama and Berlin) were brilliant. Little Drummer girl, which was mostly in my consciousness from the 1984 Diane Keaton film version, never quite clicked for me.
The intricacy of plots within plots, taking place in London, Berlin, Palestine, and Israel were particularly convoluted and hard to follow.
This edition includes a 1993 introduction by le Carré covers the detailed research he did for the book with multiple visits to Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon, as well as a meeting with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. This introduction, in fact, was perhaps the most interesting part of the novel:
As to myself, looking at it for the first time after ten years, I find that I am uncharacteristically at ease with it, my main regret being that we spend a little too long with the Germans at the beginning. My sadness is that, with few changes, the story could be played today, tomorrow, or the next day, and Charlie my heroine would still come out of it, as I did myself, torn to pieces by the battle between two peoples who both have justice on their side (1993 introduction by John le Carré).
Read: January 3, 2020 | Buy on Kindle
See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.
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