It is sheer master class fiction considering the sparse story on which it is built. A young English actress is recruited by the Israeli secret service to infiltrate the Palestinian terrorist network and the drama that unfolds before and after this ‘event’ as such, is what this 615 page novel is all about. This is the imagination of a fiction. A fictionary tale doesn’t take shape as such, but it is carefully planned, plotted, contrived and written.
Le carre’s intricate knowledge of spying, secret assignments, code languages and all the other paraphernalia of detective fiction gives the novel absolute credibility. The small details, the attention to description and the entire canvas as such, developed in an outstanding manner was a brilliant lesson (for me) about the art of writing fiction. Without the psychological part, and mere detection as such this would have been a dead novel, but John Le Carre explores with dexterity, the wounded psyche of the Palestinian and the professional skill of the Israeli mean machine. Juxtaposed between these two, is the drifting floating, identity-less, aristocratic, bohemian English actress Charlie who loves everything and loves nothing and is a sort of Oxymoron inhabiting a mentally ‘dead heaven’.