Absolute Friends

Absolute Friends

First edition
Author	John le Carré
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Spy novel
Publisher	Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date	2003
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	383 pp
ISBN	0-340-83287-8
OCLC	53124233
Dewey Decimal	823/.914 22
LC Class	PR6062.E33 A65 2004
Preceded by	The Constant Gardener
Followed by	The Mission Song

Absolute Friends is an espionage novel by John le Carré published in December 2003.

Plot summary[]

The book tells the story of Ted Mundy, the Pakistan-born son of a British army officer, who as a student becomes proficient in the German language. He joins a 1960s-era student protest group in West Berlin and becomes a lifelong friend of a West German student anarchist named Sasha. Having been brutally beaten by West Berlin police and ejected from Germany, Mundy fails at several careers; as a teacher at an English prep school, as a newspaper reporter, a radio interviewer and a novelist.

Eventually Mundy obtains a position with the British Council. Meanwhile, Sasha has defected to East Germany to become a member of the notorious Stasi secret police. On a trip to East Germany with a youth theatre group, Mundy and Sasha meet again. By this time Sasha has become totally disillusioned with the Communist Bloc and enlists the naïve Mundy to become a double agent. Sasha has access to state secrets and he recruits Mundy to help him smuggle them out of East Germany and deliver them to MI6, the British Secret Service. Their efforts contribute to the collapse of the GDR and eventual destruction of the Berlin Wall.

Later, Sasha and Mundy once again conspire in grandiose schemes to combat American military and industrial globalization. The two ideologues become pawns of the group they thought they were combating. They are framed with planted explosives by American and German security services, who brutally shoot them during a staged raid. After they are killed, they are portrayed as terrorists "with connections to Al-Qaeda", in efforts to convince European governments to support the United States in its "war on terror". After Mundy's death, Amory, his controller from the British intelligence service during his espionage years, tries to publicize the truth, but slander by the British government results in his story being totally discredited.

Characters[]

• Ted Mundy: The student activist, British spy and naïve ideologue.
• Sasha: His "Absolute friend"
• The Major: Mundy's alcoholic father
• Kate: Mundy's ex-wife
• Zara: Mundy's Turkish girlfriend.
• Mustafa: Zara's 11-year-old son
• Nicholas Amory: Mundy's MI6 case officer
• Jay O'Rourke: Amory's CIA counterpart

External links[]

• Reviews

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