The Russia House | Literary Precedents

The Russia House Literary Precedents

In the early 1960s, le Carre and another important British novelist, Len Deighton, set new standards for the spy thriller. The early years of the Cold War had seen a multitude of fictional spies who, like James Bond, tended to be larger than life and have amazing adventures in a secret world of technological marvels. In The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and Deighton's The Ipcress File (1962), a more realistic kind of spy novel found a large and responsive audience. Le Carre was then still working in the British secret service; he used a pen name instead of his own because his government required him to do so. The unexpected success of his hard-nosed, no-nonsense account of intrigue, betrayal, and fear earned him enough money to quit his government job and devote himself to his writing.

Over the years, he has created a fictional...
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