ABSOLUTE FRIENDS is a superbly paced novel spanning fifty-six years a theatrical masterstroke of tragi-comic writing and a savage fable of our times almost of our hours. The friends of the title are Ted Mundy British soldiers son born 1947 in a shining new independent Pakistan and Sasha refugee son of an East German Lutheran pastor and his wife who have sought sanctuary in the West. The two men meet first as students in riot-torn West Berlin of the late Sixties again in the grimy looking-glass of Cold War espionage and most terribly in todays unipolar world of terror counter-terror and the war of lies. Deriving its scale from A PERFECT SPY and its passion from THE CONSTANT GARDENER Le Carrés new novel presents us with magical writing characters to delight and a spellbinding story that enchants even as it challenges.
