The undisputed master of espionage fiction returns with a riveting book—his first Smiley novel in over twenty-five years.

The Cold War years are history. Peter Guillam, once the effervescent colleague and confidant of George Smiley, head of the British Secret Service’s Covert Operations, has retired to manage the family farmstead in remote Brittany. So why does his former Service, once called the Circus, summarily demand his presence in its hideous new bastion beside the River Thames? And why is he being held to account for the deaths of his old pal Alec Leamas and the hapless Liz Gold, shot dead at the Berlin Wall?

As Guillam is forced relentlessly into his own past, and old names come back to claim him—Bill Haydon, Percy Alleline, Toby Esterhase, Jim Prideaux, Connie Sachs, and George Smiley himself—it becomes clear that perceived sins committed in the name of a forgotten necessity have by no means disappeared into the past where they belong; and that Peter Guillam, in the eyes of his accusers, is responsible for all of them.

In a story palpitating with tension, humor, and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.