A Most Wanteed Man by John LeCarre

I'm not going to go so far as to say that only leCarre could have written this story, although it probably woudn't have been as good if someone else had.

It would also likely never have seen the light of day. Only someone with leCarre's stature could get published a book this courageous, this close to the edge of the reality we now find ourselves in but choose to ignore except as entertainment.

As compelling as each and every character is (no matter how little space they take in the narrative), they shouldn't be seen as purely individual representations. Everyone's an archetype, some are conscious of it. Tommy Brue, for example, knows himself to be a dinosaur, presiding over the terminal phase of his inheritance, Brue Freres, a Scots bank operating in Hamburg with a French name indicating the existence of brothers who never were; an anachronism in a world that doesn't know much anymore about ledger books, except in the figurative sense.

Annabelle Richter, who sits upright (as she should) and finds herself having to be certain she doesn't put a foot wrong from more than one perspective, is a thoroughly modern, highly-educated, self-determining Western woman who nevertheless finds herself swathed in multiple layers of baggy clothes and wears a headscarf to put her client at ease. It takes no time at all for Brue to fall for her.

On the other side, or I should say another side for there are far more than two, sits Gunther Bachmann, an old-fashioned spy-master, expert recruiter and runner of the original on-the-ground human eyes kind of intelligence gathering, now part of an officially non-existent Unit operating under a Joint Committee intended on paper to draw German espionage into a single coherent organization with one boss. The rest of the team is that: Drawn clearly as individuals, they nevertheless act as a team, following orders, blended thoroughly into the new way of doing things, deeply dependent on the kind of technological data gathering that it should scare you "they" can do, and actually do, all the time. Bachmann almost alone understands that data isn't knowledge, a point he tries repeatedly to make; a Quixotic exercise.

All the to-do flies like a storm around a young man named (not for nothing ) Issa Karpov, the son of a Russian Army General turned criminal and a Chechn mother. Issa is the creature of Russian culture gone awry anda become aware of the devastation wrought my his father not just as a person but as a nation on his mother not just as a person but as an ethnic group, and he has sided with her, with equal amounts of ignorance and passion. All we know of Issa is that he has been tortured, beaten in a Turkish jail for unspecified crimes, that he is broadly considered a terrorist either in fact or in potentialis; he is the eye at the center of the storm. Rather as is the case for his namesake, a lot goes on around him and because of him, but at his heart, Issa himself remains a mystery.

Layer after layer is peeled back to show us the history of the characters (please, this is much smeller than an onion), the way things got to be this way, at least in part, and details accrue like sand on the beach but they mustn't be ignored.

A Most Wanted Man begins with a pace that is almost laconic, and slowly builds, Issa the still point against which everything else pushes, until the story reaches an ending that will leave you as shattered as the characters.

John leCarre has given us a masterpiece that isn't merely timely, it is the times in readable form. It's all there - the anguish of irrevocable change both personal and cultural, visited upon us from outside somewhere, not our choosing; embracing the loss of the past and celebrating the resulting freedom only to find oneself in a new land without a road map; the violent clash not only between cultures but between patriotism and jingoism, promises meant and promises that are lies for what the speaker thinks express loyalty to a greater truth; and on almost every page the deep anguish of discerning the right thing to do no matter which moral lexicon you were raised with, if any.

We live in a world where we are collectively and individually unsure of who we are because we are collectively and individually unsure of where we are, or what. This is what it's like for those who are so fortunate as to live through one of the hinges of history. This is the situation we are in.

A Most Wanted Man is a keyhole through which we can peep at that situation. That you'll find it in the fiction section may make the experience a little easier to take.