Probably the best of Le Carre's post-Cold War novels that tracks the lives of two men born in the 1940s through 1960s radicalism, disillusionment with Communism and the end of the Cold War, and the global war on terror. Arguably the book is a bit too allegorical for its own good, but Sasha and Ted are fully fleshed out characters and I loved following their trajectories, as tragic as they are. ( )

Read: Absolute Friends, John le Carré

This is an angry book. It was published in 2003, after the US/UK invasion of Iraq, something le Carré plainly did not support (who did, other than right-wingers, greedy industrialists and venal politicians?). The two friends of the title are Edward Mundy and Sasha (cannot remember if his surname is mentioned, it probably is). Mundy was born in Lahore just before it became part of Pakistan. His father was a disgraced officer in the Indian army, his mother was aristocracy but died in childbirth. After Partition, Mundy and his father returned to the UK, where Mundy attended public school, then Cambridge, then moved to Berlin and became caught up in the anarchist movement there. Which is where he met Sasha. Mundy was booted out of Berlin after being arrested at a demo. He joined the British Council, where he acted as escort and factotum for various UK artistic troupes touring East Europe, And so was consequently recruited by MI6. And also ran into Sasha, in East Berlin, where he was now a Stasi officer. Sasha recruits Mundy as a Stasi asset, but is really himself a MI6 asset using Mundy as the go-between. The Berlin Wall falls some time later and their careers come to an end. In the present day, Mundy is pulled out of “retirement” by Sasha, who wants to recruit him to a scheme run by a philanthropic oligarch (2024 readers will immediately be suspicious here, with good reason). Nothing, of course, is as it seems, and nothing ends well. Le Carré’s views on Bush and Blair are clear, even if neither is mentioned in the novel. The plot leaps about chronologically but is never confusing. If the book has a flaw, it’s that its story implies redemption but finally offers the opposite. It’s a good novel, well-written and impressively researched; and it’ll make you as angry as le Carré was when he wrote it. ( )

The next book off my shelf was John Le Carré's Absolute Friends published in 2003 and so one of his later novels. We meet Ted Munday as a tour guide in Heidelberg, Germany: struggling to make a living and to cement a relationship with Zara his muslim common law wife. After a days work he is troubled and seeks the aid of his mysterious friend Sacha. From this point on in typical Le Carré mode the backstory of Ted Munday and his friend Sacha is filled in, which takes up the majority of the book. Being le Carré it is no surprise to discover Ted's links with the British secret service and the interest is in how he finds himself now in a desperate position. Who is Sacha and what is Ted doing seemingly cast adrift and working in Germany.

There are few better authors at filling in the back story of characters in an espionage novel and Le Carré is in fine form with Bundy and Sacha. Bundy however is a man who seems to let things happen to him rather than chasing after them and so his work as a spy stretches credence a little. Perhaps this is why Absolute Friends is not very highly ranked in Le Carre's oeuvre. Le Carré's later novels also seem world weary and the intelligence services come in for much criticism, he has also become more and more anti-American and it is no surprise who are the villains in this book. Having said all this I found Absolute Friends superb entertainment and Le Carré's somewhat jaundiced view of the world's situation chimed particularly with the way that I feel. 4.5 stars ( )

I preferred this to The Constant Gardener (his previous one). It felt a little lop-sided — the denouement really rushed at you. A more understated fury than recent books, but still a furious fury. Notable for being a very direct, very quick response to "The War On Terror", published in 2003.

I'm a big fan of le Carre and might have stuck with this under other circumstances. I just finished [b:A Legacy of Spies|34496624|A Legacy of Spies|John le Carré|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1495227039s/34496624.jpg|55619118] and this older book wasn't living up to that standard. It just didn't click. The unsympathetic main character, Ted Mundy, was floundering from the start and so was the plot, jumping around in time at least three times, it seems, before the end of the first chapter. I don't even know what the stakes are. I need to move on to something else in my giant TBR pile.

Ted Mundy started off mildly intriguing, then his life after meeting Sasha veered off into
violence, negativity, double-croosings, political mumbo-jumbo, and a goofy tale of more violence
involving a troupe of actors and their bus.

Very disappointing after a decent start... ( )

It's no secret that John le Carré is a master storyteller that manages to use measured yet laser-focused writing to describe story lines that would be treated in a much more hyperbolic manner by other authors. He continually manages to make the exciting mundane, and by doing so to make the mundane even more exciting and believable. This wasn't my favorite of his novels, but it was completely gripping and fascinating as it covered different territories and times than others of his that I have read. The story of Sasha and Mundy's friendship was beautifully described, and the ending was superbly executed to add an unexpected extra dollop of emotional depth. ( )

Boring, lightweight, fluff. Empty cliched characters, fantastical plot, detached, empty prose. Not bad enough to stop reading, but I wish I'd not started it. ( )

It was late winter in 2004 and we were in London. A friend of the family gushed over Absolute Friends, stating it was the only book that he and his father had agreed upon. Flipping ahead eight years, I can understand why the book was so received but that doesn't mean I liked it. Linking the Cold War, protest movements and the evangelical tone of the War on Terror, the novel is sympathetic but sort of blurred: a gestalt where Rupert Murdoch and George Soros are really the same person, or at least the same Interests. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2018/05/201822-absolute-friends-john-le-carre.html ( )

Writers must HATE to always be evaluated in terms of other authors (but according to Bloom that is what the great ones do to themselves as a matter of course). Conrad's influence is always present in Le Carre's novels. Thank God. Le Carre writes moral tales--shelved with the spy novels--on a par with Lord Jim. But the shadow of Dickens, always present, has loomed ever larger in Le Carre's works. This results in absolutely amusing scenes that are simultaneously biting, scathing. But taken too far this does affect the pace of the work. This is a difficult balancing act that I think Le Carre loses in some of the later works--but never completely for me.

I am a fan, Period. Even when I give something of Le Carre's 3 stars, I would rather have read it than not and it is probably a better read than 99 out of 100 other books I could be reading at that point. Unfortunately, Le Carre gets pitted against himself when I award the stars. And he is himself always a tough act to follow. ( )

Although I have been what I describe as a "serious reader" for nearly sixty years, "Absolute Friends" was my introduction to LeCarre'. Naturally, I was familiar with his work, but for whatever reasons, had not read anything he had penned. Having found a hardcover copy for $1. at a roadside bookstore, I decided I would delve in, with the thought "What the Hell, never too late". In retrospect I wish I had passed on what I thought to be a bargain for the "master's work". Prompted by a personal commitment I made decades ago to give the writer the benefit of the doubt, typically until the very last word, I forced myself to complete what was, in toto, a miserable chore. Thinking I was going to read a fine piece by a supposed master of the spy genre, I found myself suffering through a disjointed narrative where it was often difficult to distinguish between the thoughts of the main characters and the relentless political ranting of the author. Reading this book is akin to eating cardboard, the taste is bad and worse, there is little in it to satisfy the appetite. ( )

Once opened, I couldn’t put the book down again. This should say it all.
Just a comment about le Carré’s description of Berlin in 1968: he describes well the atmosphere (except for overuse of expletives) but he barely hints at the major issue: that Nazis everywhere in Germany were not only left in as well as gained important positions in politics, the judiciary etc.- Hans Globke just one among many who were protected by the Adenauer and the US governments; this had been an issue as important as the Vietnam War (see my more detailed comments here: https://www.librarything.com/review/58459429 ). (IX-15) ( )

I'm of two minds on this. Mostly, I really loved it. It is powerfully written and the main characters are interesting. They are very real and flawed and so much more interesting because I want them to have something good happen to them, despite all thier flaws. That is where I am mixed. I expected something like the ending but it still left me feeling like I was listening to the news; depressed and helpless. Oh, and bitter. LeCarre is always good at the moral universe inhabited by spies but here he really extends the cynical outlook and makes a much more worldly statement about ulterior motives and double dealings, etc. I agree with him more than I can state but it does make me feel very sad and down when the novel ends. I can't say that is a bad thing but I think I'm going to read something more cheerful next.

Two completely different characters meet become firm friends, fall out, reappear in each others lives through several decades and they're always in the core of the Cold War spy game. Through that period their personalities are well described and believable. However that does not hold in the post-Soviet era when they are again at opposite ends of the spectrum of political (un)certainties: Somehow, and this is never explained the 2 are selected for their roles of a lifetime to inadvertently justify Neo-con terror in response to Fundamentalist terror that enables the great Pentagon war machine and their greedy side-kicks the Armaments industry and Washington Political power-brokers to have their gory way in Iraq (?). At least I think that was the intended fictional expose within this narrative: Unfortunately the plot is stymied by only the 2 characters really having any productive direction and input: thus, when in the last chapters suddenly an omniscient chap turns up who dupes both into that 'role' he has so little depth of character and background to his remarkable position it is quite incredible to believe the 2 fell for his act. A failure of narrative that in turn makes the end to this story so implausible I guess Le Carre just got tired and wanted it over with. ( )

Le Carre books are almost a genre unto themselves these days, and like any genre, they can be a bit hit and miss. Absolute Friends is reasonably good, but it does suffer a little from flab and slight indulgence.

Teddy has come a long way from his activist student days in Berlin, however his friend Sasha is a presence that haunts him through the decades, and he guides Teddy into the ethical morass of intelligence work.

I think Le Carre is often under-rated as a stylist, in part because he's so readable and prolific, but for me the most enjoyable component of Absolute Friends was the prose. Sharp and observant, his writing is also veined with lyricism, and the elegiac, weary tone is just perfect for the story.

In terms of narrative, this is not the cracking pace that some of his other novels are - though the final quarter races by. Covering so many decades via a flashback felt a little meandering at times, and though I was enjoying the characters and their situations, the through-line was hard to trace. I wasn't sure *why* I was reading so much history.

Ultimately that history is a form of characterisation, not just of Teddy and Sasha but the developing - or rather devolving - intelligence community. Absolute Friends marked the first "hard left" turn that Le Carre took and in that context I can see why it was so bracing at the time. Five books later, and the tune is a little familiar, as are the characters, the arc they describe and the conclusion - which was a little too pat and just-so for me.

Though I agree with Le Carre on a political level, I do find his latter novels can lack the subtlety of some of his earlier work, the point is really rammed home and it's a bit of a shame as his characters are so life-like and prose so modulated.

For all that, it's still an enjoyable book. Not the best place to start on Le Carre, but by this stage, I can't imagine there are too many readers who haven't read at least one of this books. ( )

The story unfolds somewhat slowly, built around a vivid depiction of the intense and unlikely friendship that develops between Pakistani-born Brit Ted Mundy and German left-wing radical Sasha, who meet in the turbulent environment of student dissent in 1960s West Berlin. The trust that develops between them is hard won and hard tested through their involvement in radical left politics of the 1960s, then cold war intrigue as both come to serve for decades as highly effective double agents working for the downfall of the soviet Eastern bloc and especially the hated Stasi of East Germany, and finally as pawns in a deadly scheme in the 21st century war on terror.

The dramatization of Mundy and Sasha’s relationship is brilliant. Though personal trust is the linchpin of their relationship, this is not simpleminded story that politics is superficial, unworthy of our attention – the province of mere fanatics who ware not to be trusted on any account. Indeed, it is their commitment in different ways to a politics of freedom and human decency that draws them together, and is bound up in their relationship as it evolves.
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**Spoiler alert**

My one misgiving in the novel concerns the paranoid conclusion, in which it turns out that Sasha’s political passions, and Mundy’s commitment to Sasha as hope perhaps for a decent world, are manipulated by agents provocateurs committed to the hegemony of the US corporate state, and gunned down in a sham raid staged to silence European critics and dissenters in of the war on terrorism.

Is such a thing plausible? One would like to think that it is not. But since the novel’s publication some aspects of this kind of plot have been borne out by events – e.g. “terrorists” recruited by US intelligence operatives only to have their plans, which were really only ever the machinations of the US agents who manipulated them, foiled in highly public operations calculated to prove the need and efficacy of US intelligence operations, and the _targeted assassination of US citizens deemed by US administration officials to be enemy combatants. Given those developments, and recent revelations of spying, one really does not have terribly firm grounds for dismissing the plot climax as paranoid delusion.

But in the end, the plausibility of the novel’s concluding plot device is far less important than the plausibility of the two main characters commitment to a politics of resistance to injustice and oppression in the face of profound uncertainties, and their related commitment to each other as friends. This is the thread of integrity which le Carre offers in a world in which truth of any kind is virtually impossible to find. ( )

Just great! Le Carre is such a great storyteller, such a great creator of characters. Mundy is fantastic, Sasha is better. Also, Le Carre narrates this himself, and does a wonderful job. He does voices, but doesn't over-do them. ( )

"Leaving the envelope to mature for a week or two, therefore, he waits until the right number of tequilas has brought him to the right level of insouciance, and rips it open."

Ted Mundy, Pakistan-born English major's son, Germanophile and student rebel, has just about settled into mediocrity at the British Council when a trip in his guise as head of Overseas Drama and Arts (particular responsibility: Youth) becomes an exercise in secret police evasion. A figure from his past appears and he is recruited into double agency.

I got to page 260 out of 400 of this. The first 200 pages were really promising - fascinating character development, a cold open that leaves us desperate to get back to it, great student riot atmosphere... and then we get into the spying proper and it bored me to anger. Seriously, I got so angry with the dull plot, dire characters and chronically self-indulgent writing ("redux" 4 times in 2 pages??) that I decided I would rather play Bubble Shooter on my phone than continue reading it. Scathing criticism indeed.

The writing is exceptional and so consistent that I struggled to find a quote for the top of this review and shan't waste more time trying to find any more - rather than good writing with exceptional one-liners, this is excellent writing with an unfortunate dollop of smug. The page that finally made me lose my temper was one in which Ted was named "Mundy redux" 5 times over a double page. I don't know what redux was supposed to mean, given that we are already so hopelessly entrenched in Ted's multiple personalities, but it struck me as so pompous, so "I require my readers to have advanced degrees, otherwise they're not good enough", that I was genuinely angry.

The characters are impossible to relate to - Ted is dull, mediocre, apathetic; no wonder his wife finds someone else. Sasha is fiery and contrary, but implausibly so. And no one else gets much of a look-in, as this is about the two absolute friends and not anyone else. So character development for the support cast is woeful.

And as for the plot - Ted's childhood: fascinating. Student days: engrossing. Berlin riot participation: page-turning. Settling into middle-class mediocrity in Britain/spying: urgh. Bubble Shooter was more exciting. ( )

To be conveyed.
To take no decisions.
To sit back and be a spectator to your own life. That's spying too, apparently.

I've been meaning to read some Le Carré for a while now, and this happened to be the first novel of his I found in a used book store. It was first and foremost entirely different from what I was expecting. For the first 150 pages, you don't even know that you're reading a "spy novel" - it's just a book about a lost man trying to find his way, and the strange friend he makes along the way. Despite this, the writing is enthralling, and you quickly become invested in the characters and what happens to them.

Ted Mundy is the son of a washed up British ex-pat who travels to Berlin to study German language and literature during the height of the Cold War, where he quickly becomes embroiled in the politics of protest and liberation. Years later, Mundy believes he has left his extremist days behind him, only to discover that old friends have different plans for him.

Although it didn't blow me away, Absolute Friends was engrossing as it spiraled to its rather disturbing (but in retrospect unavoidable) conclusion. Le Carré clearly wanted to make a point in this novel, and I'd say he did as much and more. More than anything, the novel will infuriate you when you realize just how reflective it is of the true state of international relations in the current day. Overall, an enjoyable read, and I look forward to reading more of Le Carré's stuff. ( )

First novel I have read by Le Carré and what strikes foremost is his beautiful use of the English language. I only wonder whether Sasha and Mundy really are true friends - to me they have more of a love/hate relationship. Then again, maybe that is the definition of friendship ( )

Novels fuelled by fury are justly rare and rarely satisfying but le Carre's vast experience sustains him in the creation of this ferocious denunciation of the betrayal of trust by Western governments in their complicity over the War On Terror and the invasion of Iran. Ted Mundy is the honourable Everyman who becomes involved in dangerous espionage for a country that callously discards him to shore up its dishonest war. The contrast between state ethics and the loyalty of its agent is at the heart of this polemic. ( )

As usual it's a gem, written with a raging prose about the world we live in. ( )

I gave this a go...but ended up giving up. I'm not sure what it was -- I think a combination of the abridgement & my inability to keep my attention on it. Given another chance, with my mind in its right place, I think I'd probably enjoy it more. ( )

An enjoyable novel from the master of spy novels. Following Ted Mundy's life: born in Pakistan, moved to Britain, then became a student radical in Germany, escaped back to Britain then the U.S. for awhile, eventually returned to Britain. At this point, Ted acquires a wife, a child, a steady job, and a second existence as a double-agent for the British, working with an old, fanatic friend from his Germany days. After the Cold War ends, everything changes. What is an old spy to do after the enemy retires? ( )