John le Carré has 22 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 41 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 480 ratings. The most-rated is Agent Running in the Field.
Agent Running in the Field
Summary
"[Le Carré’s] novels are so brilliant because they’re emotionally and psychologically absolutely true, but of course they’re novels." (New York Times Book Review) A thrilling tale for our times from the undisputed master of the spy genre. Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie. Nat is not only a spy, he is a passionate badminton player. His regular Monday evening opponent is half his age: the introspective and solitary Ed. Ed hates Brexit, hates Trump, and hates his job at some soulless media agency. And it is Ed, of all unlikely people, who will take Prue, Florence, and Nat himself down the path of political anger that will ensnare them all. Agent Running in the Field is a chilling portrait of our time, now heartbreaking, now darkly humorous, told to us with unflagging tension by the greatest chronicler of our age.
©2019 John le Carré (P)2019 Penguin Audio
The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
Summary
The complete collection of acclaimed BBC Radio dramas based on John le Carré's best-selling novels, starring Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, thrilling spy novels. 'Call for the Dead' is the first Smiley novel, which sees him looking into an apparent suicide only to uncover a murderous conspiracy; 'A Murder of Quality' finds Smiley investigating a murder in a private school; 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' introduces Alec Leamas, a British intelligence officer whose East Berlin network is in tatters; 'The Looking Glass War' features former spy Fred Leiser, lured back from retirement to investigate a claim that Soviet missiles are being installed close to the West German border; 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' is the first book in the Karla trilogy, and sees Smiley searching for a mole who has infiltrated the Circus; 'The Honourable Schoolboy' sees Smiley determined to destroy his nemesis, Karla, and his spy networks; 'Smiley's People' finds George Smiley called out of retirement to exorcise some Cold War ghosts from his clandestine past; and 'The Secret Pilgrim' sees Smiley invited to dine with the eager new recruits at the Circus. He offers them his thoughts on espionage and, in doing so, prompts a former colleague to re-examine his own eventful secret life. Duration: 19 hours.
©2016 BBC Worldwide Ltd (P)2016 BBC Worldwide Ltd
A Legacy of Spies
Summary
Number-one New York Times best-seller. The undisputed master returns with his first Smiley novel in more than 25 years - a number-one New York Times best-seller and ideal holiday gift. Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley, and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications. Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In a story resonating with tension, humor, and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator, Peter Guillam, present the listener with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.
©2017 John le Carré (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Call for the Dead
Summary
An unabridged reading by Michael Jayston of John le Carré’s first novel, which introduced his most famous character, George Smiley. Smiley is one of the most brilliantly realised characters in British fiction. Bespectacled, tubby, eternally middle-aged, and deceptively ordinary, he has a mind like a steel trap and is said to possess ‘the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin’. This novel, set in London in the late 1950s, finds Smiley engaged in the humdrum job of security vetting. But when a Foreign Office civil servant commits suicide after an apparently unproblematic interview, Smiley is baffled. Refusing to believe that Fennan shot himself soon after making a cup of cocoa and asking the exchange to telephone him in the morning, Smiley decides to investigate – only to uncover a murderous conspiracy with its roots in his own secret wartime past.
©1962 David Cornwell (P)2014 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd.
Our Kind of Traitor
Summary
Set in contemporary, recession gripped Britain, a left-leaning young Oxford academic and his barrister girlfriend take an off-peak holiday on the Caribbean island of Antigua. By seeming chance they bump into a Russian millionaire called Dima who owns a peninsula and a diamond-encrusted gold watch. He also has a tattoo on his right thumb, and wants a game of tennis.
What else he wants propels the young lovers on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps, to the murkiest cloisters of the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain’s Intelligence Establishment.
©2010 David Cornwell (P)2014 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Dramatised)
Summary
Simon Russell Beale stars in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of John le Carré's novel, which introduced his most famous character, George Smiley.
It is 1962: the height of the Cold War and only months after the building of the Berlin Wall. Alec Leamas is a hard-working, hard-drinking British intelligence officer whose East Berlin network is in tatters. His agents are either on the run or dead, victims of the ruthlessly efficient East German counter-intelligence officer Hans-Dieter Mundt.
Leamas is recalled to London where, to his surprise, instead of being washed up and consigned to a desk he's offered a chance to have his revenge by becoming a pawn in a brilliantly-conceived plot to destroy Mundt. But in order to do so he has to stay out in the cold a little longer...
Starring the award-winning Simon Russell Beale as Smiley, and with a distinguished cast including Brian Cox as Alec Leamas, this tense, compelling dramatisation perfectly captures the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, intricate thriller.
©1962 David Cornwell (P)2009 BBC Audiobooks Ltd
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Dramatised)
Summary
Smiley, wrestling with retirement and disillusionment, is summoned to a secret meeting with a member of the Cabinet Office. Evidence has emerged that the Circus has been infiltrated at the highest level by a Russian agent. 'Find the mole, George. Clean the stables. Do whatever is necessary.' Reluctantly Smiley agrees, and so embarks on a dark journey into his past a past filled with love, duplicity and betrayal.
Starring the award-winning Simon Russell Beale as Smiley, and with a star cast including Anna Chancellor, Alex Jennings, Kenneth Cranham, and Bill Paterson, this epic dramatisation brilliantly depicts the complicated moral dilemmas of those who practice post-war espionage and illuminates the murky corners of le Carré's classic spy thriller - the first in the Karla trilogy.
©1974 le Carre Productions (P)2009 BBC Audiobooks Ltd
The Mission Song
Summary
Abandoned by his parents, Bruno Salvador has long looked for guidance. He found it in Mr. Anderson of British Intelligence. Working for Anderson in a clandestine facility, Salvo (as he's known) translates intercepted phone calls, bugged recordings, and snatched voice-mail messages. When Anderson sends him to a mysterious island to interpret during a secret conference, Bruno thinks he is helping Britain--but then he hears something he should not have.
©2006 David Cornwell. All Rights Reserved (P)2006 Hodder & Stoughton Audiobooks. All Rights Reserved
A Small Town in Germany (BBC Radio 4 Drama)
Summary
You're not to disturb, annoy or offend. They're walking on a knife edge out there, anything could tilt the balance.' Missing: one junior diplomat and 43 of the British Embassy's most confidential files. The timing is alarmingly significant: with neo-Nazi riots and radical student demonstrations, the threat to Germany's security is all too apparent. Britain's own Alan Turner is sent in, with instructions to tread carefully at all costs. But will he find the missing man and the files before the political situation erupts?
Kenneth Haigh stars as Alan Turner with Bernard Hepton as Rawley Bradfield in a fast-paced, explosive dramatisation of John le Carré's acclaimed spy story, dramatised by René Basilico.
©2012 John le Carre (P)2012 AudioGO Ltd
The Honourable Schoolboy (Dramatised)
Summary
George Smiley has become acting chief of the Circus, but the credibility of the British Secret Service has been shattered. Smiley's adversary is Karla, the Soviet officer who masterminded the Circus's ruin. His battleground is Hong Kong and his choice of weapons is the Honourable Gerald Westerby.
A brand new Radio 4 full cast dramatisation of the classic George Smiley novel by John le Carre, starring Simon Russell Beale. This is the sixth in the major new series of all eight George Smiley spy thrillers on radio.
©1977 David Cornwell (P)2010 BBC Audiobooks Ltd
A Perfect Spy (Dramatised)
Summary
A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the bestselling novel by John le Carré, starring James Fox, Harriet Walter and Julian Rhind-Tutt. Magnus Pym, Counsellor at the British Embassy, is hosting a dinner party at his home in Vienna when he receives an unexpected telephone call that will profoundly affect his life. Once the guests have gone, Pym breaks the news to his wife, Mary: his father, Rick, is dead. In a state of shock, he says something Mary cannot understand - 'After all these years, I'm free.' Magnus flies back to England to attend the funeral - and doesn't return. As Mary and MI6 spymaster Jack Brotherhood desperately try to find out his whereabouts, it soon becomes clear that Pym has been keeping secrets from both his family and his employers, the British Intelligence Service. Hiding out in a remote cottage in Devon, where he goes by the name of Mr Canterbury, Magnus begins to write his memoirs - retracing his rise and fall and revealing how Rick led him step by step into a double life of deception, broken promises and betrayal... Adapted from the John le Carré novel by Rene Basilico.
©1986 David Cornwell (P)2011 BBC Worldwide Ltd
The Looking Glass War (Dramatised)
Summary
A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of John le Carré's fourth novel, starring Simon Russell Beale as Smiley and Piotr Baumann as Fred Leiser.
When word reaches 'The Department' - an ailing section of British intelligence - that Soviet missiles are being installed close to the West German border, it seems the perfect opportunity to show Control and Smiley, their rivals over at the Circus, that The Department still has value.
Former spy Fred Leiser is lured back from retirement to investigate, and manages to cross the border into East Germany in a dangerous night-time operation. But the world has changed since The Department's glory days during the Second World War. The harsh realities of the Cold War now prevail, and there is no place for heroes....
With a distinguished cast including Ian McDiarmid and Philip Jackson, this compelling dramatisation perfectly captures the atmosphere of le Carré's chilling novel of deception and betrayal.
©1965 le Carre Productions (P)2009 BBC Audiobooks Ltd
Smiley's People (Dramatised)
Summary
When a Russian émigré is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, Smiley is called out of retirement to exorcise some Cold War ghosts from his clandestine past. What follows is Smiley the human being at his most vulnerable and Smiley the case officer at his most brilliant; and it makes to a thrilling conclusion his career-long, serpentine battle with the enigmatic and ruthless Russian spymaster Karla.
Starring the award-winning Simon Russell Beale as Smiley, and with a distinguished cast including Anna Chancellor, Lindsay Duncan, Maggie Steed, Alex Jennings and Kenneth Cranham, this enthralling dramatisation captures every nuance of le Carré’s complex and compelling novel - the final book in John le Carré’s Karla trilogy.
©1979 David Cornwell (P)2010 BBC Audiobooks Ltd
Marionetten
Summary
Hamburg nach 9/11. Ein muslimischer Terrorverdächtiger ist die Schlüsselfigur im gnadenlosen Wettlauf internationaler Geheimdienste. Der neue Roman von John le Carré erzählt von einer durch den Terror veränderten Gesellschaft, in der jeder Unschuldige und Schuldige gleichermaßen Statist in einem undurchschaubaren Marionettenspiel ist.
© 2008 by Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin Erschienen im Ullstein Verlag in der Übersetzung von Sabine Roth und Regina Rawlinson(p) 2010 Hörbuch Hamburg HHV GmbH
The Mission Song
Summary
Abandoned by his parents, Bruno Salvador has long looked for guidance. He found it in Mr. Anderson of British Intelligence. Working for Anderson in a clandestine facility, Salvo (as he's known) translates intercepted phone calls, bugged recordings, and snatched voice mail messages. When Anderson sends him to a mysterious island to interpret during a secret conference, Bruno thinks he is helping Britain--but then he hears something he should not have.
©2006 David Cornwell. All Rights Reserved (P)2006 Hodder and Stoughton Audiobooks. All Rights Reserved
Der Taubentunnel
Summary
Was macht das Leben eines Schriftstellers aus? Die Einsamkeit des Schreibens? Mit dem Welterfolg von Der Spion, der aus der Kälte kam gab es für John le Carré keinen Weg zurück in die Abgeschiedenheit. Er kündigte seine Stelle im diplomatischen Dienst, reiste zu Recherchezwecken um die halbe Welt und traf die Mächtigen aus Politik- und Zeitgeschehen, aber auch aus dem Filmgeschäft. So entstand eine realitätssatte Literatur, die den Nerv der Zeit trifft. John le Carré ist ein exzellenter und unabhängiger Beobachter, mit einem untrüglichen Gespür für Macht und Verrat. In seinen Memoiren blickt er nun zurück auf sein Leben und sein Schreiben. Mit Vorwort und Einführung auf Deutsch gelesen vom Autor.
©2016 Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin / David Cornwell / Hörbuch Hamburg HHV GmbH. Übersetzung von Peter Torberg (P)2016 Hörbuch Hamburg HHV GmbH
Darf ich weinen, darf ich trauern?
Summary
Die wahnwitzige Geschichte um eine innerdeutsche Verwicklung mit Folgen - von Weltbestsellerautor John le Carré! Westdeutschland, auf dem Höhepunkt des Kalten Krieges. Herr Koorp, ein anständiger Kaufmann, pflegt ein gefälliges und selbstzufriedenes Dasein in Lübeck. Dann erhält er einen Anruf von seiner Schwester im fernen Ostdeutschland. Der gemeinsame Vater sei unzeitig verstorben. Dessen letzter Wunsch? In Lübeck begraben zu werden, ausgerechnet! Um der komplizierten Bitte des Vaters nachzukommen, muss Herr Koorp die Leiche über die innerdeutsche Grenze schaffen, ein Unterfangen mit ungeahnten Risiken ... "Darf ich weinen, darf ich trauern?" ist eine kleine, feine Wiederentdeckung aus der Feder des weltberühmten Autors John le Carré. >> Diese ungekürzte Hörbuch-Fassung genießt du exklusiv nur bei Audible.
©2017 Amazon EU S.à r.l. Übersetzung von Eike Schönfeld (P)2019 Amazon EU S.à r.l.
A Murder of Quality (Dramatised)
Summary
A Murder of Quality, set in the early 1960s, sees George Smiley investigating a murder in a public school. When the wife of one of the masters is found bludgeoned to death, Smiley, out of loyalty to an old friend, agrees to look into the case.
But his investigation raises a multitude of questions. Who could have hated Stella Rode enough to kill her? Why was her dog put down shortly before the murder? And what did Mad Janie see on that fatal night?
To discover the truth, Smiley must lift the lid on a world of hidden passions and dangerous hatreds.
Starring the award-winning Simon Russell Beale as Smiley and with a distinguished cast, including Geoffrey Palmer and Marcia Warren, this tense, compelling dramatisation perfectly captures the atmosphere of le Carré's gripping, sophisticated thriller.
©1962 David Cornwell (P)2009 BBC Audiobooks Ltd
The Secret Pilgrim (Dramatised)
Summary
Simon Russell Beale stars in this BBC Radio full-cast dramatisation of John le Carré’s last Smiley novel.
George Smiley is one of the most brilliantly realised characters in British fiction. Bespectacled, tubby, eternally middle-aged, and deceptively ordinary, he has a mind like a steel trap and is said to possess ‘the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin’.
The Berlin Wall is down, the Cold War is over, but the world’s second oldest profession is very much alive. Smiley accepts an invitation to dine with the eager young men and women of the Circus’ latest intake, and over coffee and brandy, by flickering firelight, he beguilingly offers them his personal thoughts on espionage past, present, and future. In doing so, he prompts one of his former Circus colleagues into a searching examination of his own eventful secret life.
Starring the award-winning Simon Russell Beale as Smiley, and with a distinguished cast including Patrick Malahide as Ned, this engrossing dramatisation brings le Carré’s masterful novel vividly to life.
©1990 David Cornwell (P)2010 BBC
Spionen der kom ind fra kulden
Summary
John le Carrés ikoniske koldkrigsroman fra 1963. Alec Leamas er leder af den britiske efterretningstjeneste i Berlin og ser med egne øjne sin sidste agent blive likvideret ved Muren. Leamas er en sand professionel, en mester i den livsfarlige metier, styret af en særegen sammenbidt vilje til retfærdighed og - når det kræves - til gengældelse. og det gør det her. Leamas vil have hævn over den østtyske efterretningschef Mundt. Som sin sidste mission vil han gennemføre en dristig kontraspionageintrige. Men allerede fra missionens første dag erfarer Leamas, at selv den mest drevne mesterspion hurtigt kan komme til at fremstå som en hjælpeløs amatør.
©2020 Gyldendal (P)2020 Gyldendal