Books

First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the title page, quoting the first line from the book: "John le Carré - 'The American handed Leamas' - and so on! 22 May '66, London". This copy is in a vivid example of the dust jacket and was inscribed in the same month that le Carré wrote his memorable open letter, "To Russia, With Greetings". The article was in response to V. Voinov, the critic from the Moscow journal Literaturnaya Gazeta who accused le Carré of working for the secret service in his review of this book. Le Carré thought Voinov "smelt in my writing the greatest heresy of all: that there is no victory and no virtue in the Cold War, only a condition of human illness and a political misery. And so he called me its apologist" (p. 6). The definitive Cold War thriller proved an instant bestseller, earning le Carré half a million pounds and winning the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award (1963), the Somerset Maugham Award (1964), and an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America (1965). The film adaptation of 1965, starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom, was equally successful and received four BAFTA Awards. This copy is in a rare variant of brown boards, opposed to the more commonly seen blue boards. The spine lettering is stamped identically and it may have been a trial binding. Octavo. Original brown boards, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Spine mildly faded; unclipped jacket bright red, with virtually no trace of sunning to the spine, negligible rubbing at corners: a near-fine copy in fine jacket. John le Carré, "To Russia, With Greetings", Encounter, May 1966.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a 1963 Cold War spy novel by the British author John le Carré. It depicts Alec Leamas, a British intelligence officer, tasked with one last assignment to prove a Western intelligence asset in East Germany.