After John le Carré’s death, his son had the ‘arduous’ task of bringing George Smiley back to life

When the famous British novelist John le Carré died in 2020, leaving behind a literary legacy — and a mission for his family. Le Carré’s son, author Nick Harkaway, describes it as “an obligation to try to keep the books read, to keep the name alive, but, more than anything else, to keep the books in circulation.”

The family agreed that the best way to honor le Carré would be with another book featuring his most beloved character, British spymaster George Smiley. Harkaway had a list in mind of people who could continue Smiley’s story – then his brother suggested Harkaway write the novel himself.

Although he had already published several of his own novels, Harkaway said he had “good reasons” why he did not want to take on the task. But, he adds, “at that point, all the reasons why I wouldn’t do it – it’s incredibly difficult. It’s this extraordinary piece of 20th century literary history, it’s this, this is it – all these things became the reasons why I would do it.”

Harkaway’s latest novel, Karla’s choicetakes place in 1963, between the Le Carré novels The spy who came from the cold, And Spy soldier handyman tailor. In the new book, a retired Smiley is called back into service to conduct a simple interview – which leads to much more than he bargained for. The novel also serves as the origin story for Smiley’s nemesis in the KGB, known only as Karla.

Harkaway says that bringing his father’s characters back to life was something of a literary apprenticeship: “I learned writing from him through osmosis, but we never really talked much about writing,” says Harkaway. he. “And so the idea of ​​sitting down and holding the controls of the machine and operating it the way he did and working with these characters was a way of learning, which is what I wanted.”

Interview Highlights

On his father sharing his process on the Smiley books

I was born in 1972 and grew up with my father reading his work. …He would write early in the morning, then come to the breakfast table and read them to my mother across the table. Sometimes she would type them, then he would read them again in the afternoon from the typed text, or he would work on the typed text the next morning. And by the way, I love it: they used scissors and a stapler; this was copied and pasted, because this was before digital word processing. In the fundamental years when I was developing language, an hour, two hours of my day consisted of listening to the writing of George Smiley’s novels.

If he felt his father’s spirit while writing

I hoped, in the inevitable way of a cheesy movie sequence, that when I was writing this book, I would somehow look up from my desk and see him sitting in the chair by the window, perhaps with sort of Obi-Wan Kenobi vibe: “Remember the semicolon.” And of course, I didn’t. And I’m not even sure I really hoped for it. It just would have seemed like an appropriate film. But what I got instead was the companionship of occupying the space he occupied: the act of standing and holding the levers of the Smiley machine and moving them. And there’s a kind of unity that I feel from that that’s incredibly emotionally powerful. And some days it’s actually too emotionally powerful. You have to kind of tamp it down. But I’m not haunted by him, even in the most benign sense of the word. I grieve from time to time. It doesn’t go away. It just becomes manageable.

Growing up with a famous writer father

I don’t know what it was like to be someone else’s child. For most of my life, I imagined that because my mother made a huge effort to keep our lives somewhat down-to-earth in various ways and was very successful at it, that my life was somehow sort of like everyone else’s. …And the more I look at this from a distance, the more I realize that this is nonsense on an epic scale.

My life was very strange by any reasonable standard. …When I was little we lived in a house on the cliff in Cornwall. Our closest neighbor was a mile away. … I spent my time walking the coastal path with a dog all alone at the age of 6. I was a little wild. …And then, every now and then, the house would fill up with people and these people were somehow important that I didn’t quite understand. And they would be foreign editors and correspondents and journalists, and some of them would be politicians, and some of them would not have a defined profession. And they were fascinating.

On choosing his own pseudonym, Nick Harkaway

I knew, thanks to my father’s life, that having a pseudonym is a very useful shield. If anyone wants to yell at Nick Harkaway, they can do it all they want. In the end, even if it bothers me, it doesn’t affect me, you know. But when someone picks you up under your real name, it’s a different experience. …

The story of my father choosing his own pseudonym was that he was told he should have a good solid English name, made up of two monosyllables. And he was so irritated by this advice that he chose instead to invent a French name. So when I decided I wanted a name, I went to see Dictionary of Brewer’s Phrases and Fablesand I literally let it open and stuck pins in the words. And I had a list of 20 absolutely stupid names and Harkaway was the last one.

By writing more in his father’s style

The first thing is that my father’s style is not consistent in his writing. Of course not, because it’s a huge career. But with the Smiley books particularly,…the first three…(have) short, fairly declarative sentences. They are almost black. They have fairly simple plots. And they obey this dictum that he… liked to repeat in telegrams and civil service reports: 400 words, no adjectives. They are very clear and austere. And then by the time you get to Handyman Tailoryou had a few books in between. You have a different philosophy at work. Language is much more wandering, much more illusory. The book is more complex, the structures are more complex and more poetic.

Why George Smiley is physically banal, almost boring

In the UK you had James Bond, you had Bulldog Drummond, you had these action hero type spy stories. And (du Carré’s) experience was not that. These were not incredibly energetic, combat-oriented, squeaky-clean heroes. They were ordinary people doing a difficult, endless, perhaps slightly futile thing, and coming up against their own failings. And he wanted to show humanity. Showing humanity so you can understand it and feel compassion for it is a big part of everything he wrote.

Smiley is, in many ways, the epitome of that. He’s just that guy. And yet at the same time, of course, he’s an extremely intelligent reasoner, he’s empathetic, and he understands people before they understand themselves. So you have, on the one hand, a character who is an ordinary man in a world that seems appropriate for the universe that we know. And on the other hand, you have a sort of Sherlock Holmes character who can explain to you the incredibly complex, stupid and brutal realities of the world that you see around you and tell you why they are that way and even control them a little to return less. It’s this combination that I think makes it incredibly appealing.

Therese Madden and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.

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