Absolute Friends

Book Description

An absolutely triumphant bestsellereverywhere hailed as the masterpiece toward which John le Carr has been building since the fall of communism. This epic tale of loyalty and betrayal spans the lives of two friends from the riot-torn West Berlin of the 1960s to the grimy looking-glass of Cold War Europe to the present day of terrorism and new alliances. ABSOLUTE FRIENDS is the thrilling work of international espionage that le Carr fans have long awaiteda brilliant, ferocious, heartbreaking work for the ages.

Customer Reviews:

surprise 2nd half.......2007-09-09

Guess what, I actually didn't finish this book in one goal because the first part of the book was a bit too slow to me while the author spent time building up the backgrounds of the characters. After few months I went back and continue the rest of the book, the story is so much of a surprise! It's actually heartbreaking as well!

A Numbing Tirade.......2007-08-10

Le Carre's Absolute Friends may be "stunningly timely" according to Entertainment Weekly but it is also a 466-page paperback yawn. In fewer than twenty pages the reader can predict the outcome but it takes a good three hundred pages to begin to get interesting. That fades quickly with le Carre's ham-fisted slamming of the West for everything wrong with the world, a numbing tirade that seems to be the only purpose for the novel. It certainly isn't to tell a story. Le Carre fails to use even the slightest subtlety in either character development or plot. What happened to the master story teller? He certainly abandoned his craft to write Absolute Friends.

My copy went in the recycle bin. Don't waste your money. You'll get better value out of spending it on toilet paper.

liberal party line.......2007-07-28

Liberal party line about the Iraq war - Bush lied, people died, the U.S. faked weapons of mass destruction, blah blah blah, thinly veiled in similar scenarios and set during the Cold War. The U.S. and Britain are, as always, most evil, while Arab characters are victims and adorable. Throw in a lot of very boring biography of the main character and you have what you read in the newspaper every day wrapped in some lame fiction. Le Carre has nothing new to say here. Definitely the last of his books I will read.

A smart and satisfying spy thriller.......2007-06-02

This novel was a real pleasant surprise for me. I'd read one or two le Carre novels quite some time ago, and I had some vaguely pleasant memory of them, but I'm certain I enjoyed this book a great deal more than I had any other le Carre stuff I've read.

First of all, it's topical. It's wonderful to see that the end of the Cold War did not mean the end of interesting espionage tales. Though it was published 3 (4?) years ago, it's still very relevant to what's going on Iraq, perhaps even moreso now than on its publication date.

That's not to say that it's all about America and Iraq, really only the climax during the last 150 pages or so is directly involved with that issue. The backstory of how these two men met, befriended each other, and became involved working on both sides of the Berlin wall occupies the bulk of the novel. Mr le Carre is many things but he is not direct; IMO that's an admirable attribute and it's a pleasure to weave through the narrative until we arrive where we know we're going: these men become spies, and they become involved with British intelligence.

A few times I scratched my head and wondered "where is he going with this?" In a novel that one expects to be formulaic and in which certain things are taken for granted from page 1 it's a joy to be confused about where the author is taking me. And maybe I'm a dullard, but I didn't see the end coming until about the same time as the two central characters, to their detriment but to my delight. Who doesn't enjoy a surprise ending?

And though the politics of the novel may seem a bit paranoid, it's a shame to have to say that in this day and age...they may not be so paranoid, after all. And at the very least the reader is left with a few things to go over in his or her mind after the story's through. What more can one ask of a novel?

Pick this one up.

Prescient to a tee.......2007-05-16

In this 2003 novel, le Carre predicts that the next 'War on Terror' will be an attack on Iran and if you read the subtext of the novel it's clear that he, like many others believe that 9-11 was a complete hoodwink of the American populace.

Well he's spot on about Iran....just listen to those new war drums beat and 9-11 is still as murky and weird as ever.

Good plotting and a sad ending but a must read for everyone. Take the blue pill.......

Average customer rating:

Slow build up with a Great finish
A joy to read, but untimately tried to answer its own questions
Great buddy novel fights the hyper-power
Absolutely brilliant British thriller
Absolutely Boring Friends

Absolute Friends
John le Carre
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0316000647
Release Date: 2004-01-12

Customer Reviews:

Slow build up with a Great finish.......2007-09-03

I found this book to have a bit of a slow buildup, which was probably necessary in order to provide us the necessary background on the two main characters, Mundy and Sasha. Once the main storyline kicked into gear, the results were outstanding. I wouldn't call this book Anti-American. In fact, you could argue that this book is pro-American, in that it reflects the great American ideals of rebellion and challenging tyranny.

This book does oppose the opinions of the current presidential administration. It speaks to the neo-McCarthyism that existed at the start of the Iraqi War. I have to think though that today, in 2007, the vast majority of Americans realize what a bill of goods they were sold.

It was a very interesting read that also makes you think.

A joy to read, but untimately tried to answer its own questions.......2007-08-27

A story of two co-operatives, Edward Mundy and Sasha. They are cold war people who have also been also urban terror people back of the West German variety. They have complicated lives, but on the face of it no more complicated than most. Eventually they outlive their usefulness as operatives and so are set up as examples. After many years of service to both sides to spite the middle (or perhaps the other way round), they are set up by a CIA-inspired plot to create a political justification for the war on terror, and a political lever to force the position of central European states. The problem with the end of the book is that it was probably written before any of the preceding material was constructed. The problem with the final "setting up" project of the plot is that two hardened intelligence people would have smelled rats, coypus and copious other rodents in any escapade which apparently involved extensive charity of the monetary kind paid straight in to the pocket. In fact Ted takes the trouble to get his Turkish girlfriend and child back to Turkey before the denouement, but in the end it was all too convenient that things turned out that way. Beautifully written and superbly paced, the book was a joy until the polemic emerged.

Great buddy novel fights the hyper-power.......2007-04-24

A richly observed story of Mundy, a man coming into political awareness in radical late 60s Berlin but never coming to terms with who he really is. Except that he is best friends with Sasha. Yeah, it's a buddy novel and what guy isn't a sucker for one of those?

The Mundy character is a suberb fictional creation, absolutely right on. Well, except till the last chapters. Alas, that final section didn't ring true. The Mundy that Le Carre had created for me should've smelled the rat quicker and bailed. That Mundy would've rescued fragile Sasha from the brutal state, the way he had on the streets of Berlin in '68.

As for the politics, what struck me is how poorly put together is the alternative to the U.S. hyper-power. There's no counter-ideology, for example, just a collection of musty old "60s classics" like Frantz Fanon. So the opposition to Le Carre's accurately described near-naked U.S. imperialism (neoconservative evangelism is at best a jock strap) is an embarrassing parody, French snobbery it's only solid pillar. The world needs something much better.

Absolutely brilliant British thriller.......2006-11-08

This is not another spy-story. Far from it. It is a lot more. It is inspired political fiction. John le Carré goes back to 1947, or even slightly before, and he is haunted by Hitler and nazism (though he did not know at the time of his writing this book that Gunther Grass - page 381 - had been an enlisted member of the SS). He depicts a long film of events going from the British Empire to the War on Iraq, in successive tableaus that follow the Cold War - and its successive phases - and then the Fall of the Wall, and then the desovietization of the world, and then the monocentric world dominated by the US who consider, being in the hands of born-again fundamentalist evangelists, that they are right by essence, that they have God on their side by birth, and that they have to prevent terrorism by preventively waging a preventive war on aforesaid terrorism that should not have to be prevented since it is already there. But Le Carré is brutally clear on this preventive dimension : it enables the US to stage any kind of killing or military operation against existing or non-existing terrorists anywhere in the world in the name of prevention, which means in the name of US interests, such as oil and some other commodities, and furthermore call all those opposed to such ventures chickens, turkeys or other yellow-belly cowards. Le Carré goes even further in that trespassing of homogenized and standardized prudence. There could be a perfect de facto alliance - like in some kind of superbowl game - between that new shadowy anti-terrorist US invisible and privatised army and, on the other hand the peddlers of the anti-US leftist trotskyist anarchist antiglobalist alter-mondialist alternative European-and-Arab-(not-to-say-Moslem)-centered evasively invisible forces. This leads to an absolutely psychotic vision of the world since a bunch or a cluster of less than a dozen people are ruling the world without having to give any account to anyone or any institution. Democracy is a lure. Freedom is a trap. These christian fundamentalists' conception is total submission and the immediate freezing of any thinking, even purely existential or survivalistic non-conceptual brain work that could hardly qualify for abstract mental creative thought. Here Le Carré is brilliant because he is British in mind, or if you prefer is British in mind because he is brilliant. He sounds at times anti-US, though he is not : he is not against Americans in general but against this small group of industrial military evangelistic bigots that have taken over the US, Washington DC, and plan to rule the world unopposed, unchallenged, un-anything-you-may-think-of. Le Carré goes as far as identifying this attitude to the old British - and probably French - imperialistic mood that died hard but with no possible return after WW2. The final irony of the book is that only the French would be able to resist this enterprise because they do not give a damn whether some crazy Americans pour Bordeaux or Chateauneuf-du-Pape wine in some drain or decide to call French fries Freedom fries : after all in that lexical-cleansing enterprise freedom is put on the grill to fry. The book is packed with action and even adventure at times, though the vision of East Germany, the GDR of old, is slightly untrue and aggravated. But that's a detail. History will correct such caricatural visions in due time. A last remark to say that the book was written in June 2003 and of course could not envisage the stalemate in Iraq, the impasse in Iran, the blind alley in North Korea and the invicible and unpreventable growth of this new geo-political power : Russia, India and China with half a dozen if not more smaller but natural resource rich countries around them. All that had not come out of the bush yet and was still in the undergrowth of the jungle into which some hundred thousand GIs started to jump and tread in march 2003. Brilliant British Bravado to be proud of even and especially if you are not British.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Absolutely Boring Friends.......2006-05-31

This is LeCarre's most pedestrian work. It starts well, getting one involved with the two major characters. But then it seems to tread water for much of the remainder of the book, at times making very little sense. One character becomes a caricature and unlike some of LeCarre's main characters in other books, I found I didn't really care what happened to him. He behaved in unexplicable, erratic ways that simply were not convincing. The denouement at the end was equally unconvincing. Sorry I cannot be more positive, but this book was a real disappointment.

CCEL Classics CD: works by Saint Augustine, John Calvin, John Donne, Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, Martin Luther, Saint Teresa of Avila, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Kempis, John Wesley, and more!

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CCEL Classics CD: works by Saint Augustine, John Calvin, John Donne, Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, Martin Luther, Saint Teresa of Avila, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Kempis, John Wesley, and more!
Dr. W. Harry Plantinga
Manufacturer: Christian Classics Ethereal Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

General | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Product Description

The most important spiritual writings of Christian history are available on this Classics CD by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) at Calvin College. It contains 118 Christian classics, including three versions of the Bible, several commentaries, Bible dictionaries, readings, spiritual guides, sermons, poems and journals -- all in a convenient, searchable form. Books are available in HTML and PDF formats. The easy-to-use CCEL Desktop software powering the CD enables users to browse and print books and install additional books from the Web. The top-of-class search engine can search for words or phrases in books, in authors works or in the whole library. In addition, it can search for dictionary definitions of words and commentary or references to scripture passages. The interface is a Web browser. The CD is compatible with Windows 2000+, Macintosh 10.3+, and most Linux versions.

Power Schmoozing: The New Etiquette for Social and Business Success

Average customer rating:

This book can change your outlook on life!
THIS BOOK COULD CHANGE YOUR SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE
Thanks, but no thanks.
Too heavy-handed.
Good, but better guides available

Power Schmoozing: The New Etiquette for Social and Business Success
Terri Mandell
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0070398879

Book Description

From breaking the ice at a business seminar, to hosting a successful cocktail party, Power Schmoozing is packed with extremely useful techniques and real world information about how to talk to people, what to say, and how to keep in touch with them to cultivate productive long-term business relationships. It's for every business person who wants to move through the world a little more fearlessly, a little more freely, and with a lot more confidence. It shows how to overcome the fear and imtimidation associated with unfamiliar social situations, take on a room full of strangers--in any business or social setting--and emerge with contacts, even friends, host a successful party or event, and observe the rules for dating someone at work.

Customer Reviews:

This book can change your outlook on life!.......2000-04-18

I bought this book a few years ago, and find myself going back to freshen up with it every few months. Power Schmoozing is still an interesting read. Terri Mandell's book provides excellent insight into the art of socializing amongst people, including social etiquette rules for "the game" of everyday life. It has changed how I perceive and interact with others, at least somewhat. Applying some of the techniques can recover what would otherwise be an akward moment of personal disaster into a memorable and often endearing episode. I had once thought that I was the only person that felt like a bit of an outsider around new people, until I discovered that everybody else has the same problem with 'breaking-the-ice' too! I have in the past recommended this book to others. If you are somewhat withdrawn, a social pessimist, or a bit low on confidence, this book could change your life!

As a student, I find that offering to help out at the registration desk at a conference has worked exceedingly well. I was able to get free admission to two separate full-day conferences for me within the last 2 weeks, and the opportunities to network with potential employers at the conference is even better. In its advice and content, Power Schmoozing has returned many times my original investment.

Find the courage within yourself to go forth boldly and truthfully... and have fun out there!

THIS BOOK COULD CHANGE YOUR SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE.......2000-01-15

The techniques are brash and a bit scary. But you know what? I tried it, and it really works! I was mortified at first about being so bold until I just bit the bullet and used some of Mandell's ideas. Suddenly I'm the center of attention. My instinct was to panic and say, "Yeah, NEGATIVE attention..." But when I realized my social calendar was filling up and my morning call lists were getting shorter (because people were actually calling me instead), I knew I was onto something. And it gets easier with time. I think my personality has really opened up in the process, I feel much more confident, and socially at ease wherever I go. In control of a room rather than the room being in control of me. Bottom line... no guts, no glory. You've gotta really want it to make it work. My guess is the majority of people are probably too timid to even give these techniques a try. I've heard Mandell does great seminars on "Power Schmoozing" as well.

Thanks, but no thanks........1999-07-13

I read parts of her book. One of the things she recommends is that if you can't afford to pay for a social event, to sneak in!?!?!? Thanks, but NO THANKS!!!!! Perhaps I'm too honest, but I got a problem with that technique. The consequences of getting caught and the damage to your reputation would far outweigh any benefit.

Too heavy-handed........1999-02-08

I found the author's treatment of schmoozing to be very serious and heavy. If someone were to try her techniques, I am quite sure most people would be turned off. Schmoozing, as I understand it, is a process whereby both parties can benefit. Mandell's approach is very self serving.

Good, but better guides available.......1998-11-29

For example, I found the "Vault Reports Guide to Schmoozing" to be more current, more interesting, and more informative.

Average customer rating:

Absolute Friends
John le Carre
Manufacturer: Hachette Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue | Thrillers | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

The Mission Song: A Novel

ASIN: 1594835780

Average customer rating:

Excellent
A British Author At His Best
Spies, Lies, Politics and Tragedy in John le Carre's Best
His finest work ever?
Spy vs. spy vs. the rest of us

Absolute Friends
John le Carre
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0316058777

Customer Reviews:

Excellent.......2007-01-02

This was the first le Carre book I read, and I thought it was amazing. It's not exactly a spy book, and it's not exactly an edge-or-your-seat thriller. The story spans the cold war to present, following the main character as he goes to many countries and watching him change with the times. Espionage just happens to be part of what occurs, but it is not really even central to the story. What is central is the character, and the changes of history.

The book is written in the first person, so the readers know only what the main character knows, which I think is the best way to write a novel like this. I read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold after I read this, and I was disappointed to find that The Spy used a narrative style that let you see into the minds of more than one person, and it didn't let you know all of the thoughts of even the main character. For that and other reasons I liked Absolute Friends better.

With such a great story, I was a little bit surprised to find that the ending was a bit far-fetched. However, I'm still going to give it five stars because the rest of the book is so good. To be fair, the ending of this book is better than that of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which I found even harder to swallow.

A British Author At His Best.......2006-10-23

Spies, Lies, Politics and Tragedy in John le Carre's Best.......2006-10-08

Ted Mundy was born in India, in what later became Pakistan. His father was a British soldier who drank too much. His mother died in childbirth. Father and son return to England where Ted goes to school till he drops out of Oxford. He goes to Berlin, falls in with leftist anarchists and meets his absolute friend Sasha.

He saves Sasha's life during a student demonstration and is beaten for his trouble, then whisked out of Germany by British diplomats. He eventually gets a job leading goodwill tours of British artists behind the Iron Curtain and he seems to be a happily married member of the British middle class. Then he gets in trouble because a bunch of clueless British drama students try to smuggle a Polish actor from Poland through East Germany and into the West.

Sasha, now an agent of the East German secret police, steps in and saves Ted from the Stasi and now Ted is pulled into a double spy game in which both he and Sasha pretend to spy on England, when their real goal is to pull down the East German regime they both despise.

They remain double agents throughout the Cold War, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ted is out of the spy game and they drift apart. They don't see each other often, but the bond between them is strong and apparently eternal.

Ted divorces, drifts to Germany, gets a job as a tour guide in Germany, moves in with a Turkish prostitute, becomes sort of a surrogate father for her son Mustafa, gets a dog and appears to finally be happy. Than Sasha returns to his life. Pulling Ted into a scheme of founding an open university that will liberate Western thought from the corporate imperialists.

This scheme is funded by a mysterious character named Dimitri, a renegade billionaire who denounces the recent invasion of Iraq by the Americans as "a criminal and moral conspiracy." He goes on to claim that the war has been, "dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty...launched by a clique of war-hungry Judeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America's post-9/11 psychopathy.

Yes, the book is a bit political, le Carre seems to feel that he has to get his views about Bush, Blair and the Iraqi War into popular print. Still it's a heck of a story with an fatalistic ending that reminded me of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold." This is a character driven book, excellently written and it swept me away, but I suspect that if you are a strong supporter of the current administration in Washington, that your political views will cloud your judgement of this fine story which is, in my opinion, one of John le Carre's best.

Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne

His finest work ever?.......2006-08-27

You know LeCarre, right? Master of the spy novel. When the Cold War ended, I heard that his writing became obsolete before it was published. I think the world did that to all the espionage authors. Doesn't RED OCTOBER look incredibly dated, whether in book form or with Sean Connery reminding us what a fantastic actor he is?

Well, now America has another war, and LeCarre has written what may well be his finest novel. No small praise considering his resume, folks. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and all the other Smiley books. I like this one better. And, oddly enough, the "Large Print" edition is cheaper at Amazon. I can read it without my glasses.

Spy vs. spy vs. the rest of us.......2006-07-08

When the Cold War ended, John Le Carre cast about to find a new enemy, just like many of the globe's intelligence agencies. *Absolute Friends* is Le Carre's recent foray is into what happens to spies when their war ends.

The two spies, Sasha and Mundy, spy for the Soviet Bloc and England, respectively. Each is a double agent and gives secrets to the other to advance their careers. They are a "country of two," and absolute friends. Unfortunately, the world changes, and their little game changes with it. The players have become rougher, even thugs, Le Carre suggests, and are no longer gentlemen playing a gentlemen's game. Two gentlemen cannot stand against the machine that uses terror as a weapon.

In *Absolute Friends,* Le Carre has reversed some of his earlier promulgations about the spy trade. Before, spies were in a league all of their own and played by their own rules against each other. Here, the game is open to all comers.

TK Kenyon
RABID, coming in 2007 from Kunati Books

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Absolute Friends
John Le Carre
Manufacturer: Hodder & Stoughton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Absolute Friends
John le Carre
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: B000JBY0PG

4 Books: The Constant Gardner, The Secret Pilgrim, Absolute Friends, The Night Manager (Unboxed Set of Suspense Books)

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4 Books: The Constant Gardner, The Secret Pilgrim, Absolute Friends, The Night Manager (Unboxed Set of Suspense Books)
John Le Carre , and John LeCarre
Manufacturer: various
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WEAR98

Product Description

4 Books: The Constant Gardner, The Secret Pilgrim, Absolute Friends, The Night Manager (Unboxed Set of Suspense Books), in either Hard or Softcover, (See Seller Condition Comments), Shipped in one package to save on shipping costs.

5 Titles By John Le Carre : Our Game The Tailor of Panama Single and Single The Constant Gardener Absolute Friends

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5 Titles By John Le Carre : Our Game The Tailor of Panama Single and Single The Constant Gardener Absolute Friends
John Le Carre
Manufacturer: Various
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000MXR8YQ

Product Description

5 Titles By John Le Carre : Our Game The Tailor of Panama Single and Single The Constant Gardener Absolute Friends. Five mmpb books.

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