A Most Wanted Man

Puppets (Original Title: A Most Wanted Man) is the German language edition of the 21st novel by John le Carré, which refers to events surrounding the Hamburg terror cell, but leans also on the fate of the years innocently imprisoned in Guantánamo in the opinion of the author Murat Kurnaz. The spy novel shows how society has changed after 11 September 2001 in a society of suspicion and prejudice against Muslims. The German translation by Sabine Roth and Regina Rawlinson appeared as the original edition of 2008.

Content

A young man named Issa Karpov, apparently Muslim, comes via Turkey and Denmark to Hamburg. Here illegally detaining he asks a Turkish family to support. This takes him only once on, however, is their host against getting scared, the more she thinks out of him. Finally, Issa, who seems to have tons of money, even between the fronts of many secret looks.

Reviews

Hendrik Werner reminds the world that " the playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt (...) in his theoretical writings, the grotesque as the only textual form named ( has ), which can be a complex, unfathomable become reality justice. " According to Werner follow le Carré Dürrenmatt "in his ancestral genre when he depicts a monstrous branching political reality in the metaphor of a ( twisted ) puppet, which is expected to be similar to hard for most people to understand how the laws of the market and the aporias of the financial crisis. " le Carré issued with his novel on the other side " directly into the fear center of the Western world: the fear of Islamic terrorism - and bordering on paranoia culture of suspicion that drives cruel flowers ".

In this context, and less in his characters ( so impressive characters as in previous novels, George Smiley or Magnus Pym should seek in vain) looked Publishers Weekly the special strength of the novel: "The book works best in its depiction of the rivalries besetting even post -9 / 11 intelligence agencies That should be allies (...).

Ijoma Mangold wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, puppets " performs masterfully that, as is a keyword - jihadism - forms an entire security bureaucracy."

Günther Grosser looks in the Berliner Zeitung that " le Carré has now regained its former strength after a few somewhat weaker novels again.

Thomas Wörtche, however, considers the novel in his review for Germany Kultur for le Carré's " probably the most boring, zahnlosesten and ausrechenbarsten novel of the last 15 years."

Peter Korte found in the Sunday newspaper: "In all its opacity is very transparent constructed. Only the tone in which le Carré told, is very sedate ... That one book but not more puts away, as until the last ramification is tracked, of course with a man like le Carré of itself. "

Jochen Vogt holds puppets in the Tagesspiegel not for a " roman a clef, but a story that is very well balanced confident the 'war on terror ' and its relevance, typical set pieces of political thriller and basic moral questions, " finally for an "outstanding novel. "

In the daily newspaper Jörg Sundermeier verreißt the book as " a (s) quickly knitted (s) novel, which is not even really exciting, " and criticized the " good-evil dichotomy, which is now completely useless. "

Tobias Gohlis looks at ARTE.TV Issa as " one of the most touching innocent characters that John le Carré has created a soul brother of his latest hero, the half- Kenyan, half- British interpreter, Bruno Salvador Mission Song, a distorted mirror - image of the author as a young man ", holding puppets for" le Carré at its best: a clown and a treatise ( the fact that even the best can not be innocent ), a love story and an espionage conspiracy fiction and an indictment accused, as always in the past. novels, the blind, self-centered imperialism of the United States. A great, funny, sad book about weak, upright, powerless people. "