''Smiley's People'' is a
spy novel
Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligenc ...
by British writer
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. ...
, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy
George Smiley
George Smiley OBE is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is a career intelligence officer with "The Circus", the British overseas intelligence agency. He is a central character in the novels ''Call for the Dead'', '' A Mu ...
, it is the third and final novel of the "
Karla Trilogy", following ''
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' is a 1974 spy novel by British author John le Carré. It follows the endeavours of taciturn, aging spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. The novel has receive ...
'' and ''
The Honourable Schoolboy
''The Honourable Schoolboy'' (1977) is a spy novel by British writer John le Carré. George Smiley must reconstruct an intelligence service in order to run a successful offensive espionage operation to save the service from being dismantled by ...
''. George Smiley is called out of retirement to investigate the death of one of his old agents: a former Soviet general, the head of an
Estonian émigré organisation based in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
. Smiley learns the general had discovered information that will lead to a final confrontation with Smiley's nemesis, the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
spymaster
Karla.
Plot
Maria Ostrakova, a Soviet émigrée in Paris, is told by a Soviet agent calling himself "Kursky" that her daughter Alexandra, whom she was forced to leave behind, may be permitted to join her. Maria applies for an exit permit for her daughter; then, hearing nothing more, writes to General Vladimir, a former Soviet general and British agent, for help. Vladimir realises that Maria was used to provide a false identity for an unknown young woman, a ploy associated with KGB spymaster Karla, and that this is probably an unofficial operation.
Vladimir contacts Toby Esterhase, his old handler in the Circus, but Esterhase, now retired, refuses help. Next Vladimir sends a confidant, Otto Leipzig, to Paris to interview Maria, who identifies "Kursky" in a photograph. Vladimir contacts the Circus again and insists on speaking to his former case officer, George Smiley, who is also retired. The Circus personnel are sceptical and uncooperative. Meanwhile, Vladimir is betrayed to Karla and assassinated on Hampstead Heath while on his way to meet a junior Circus contact.
Circus head Saul Enderby and Civil Service undersecretary Oliver Lacon, wanting to bury the matter quickly to protect the Circus from scandal, recall Smiley from retirement. Smiley takes Vladimir's claims seriously and investigates. He recovers a second letter from Maria, who fears for her life. Near the site where Vladimir was killed, he discovers the negative of a compromising photograph of Leipzig and another man with prostitutes. Smiley consults dying former Circus researcher Connie Sachs, who identifies the second man as Oleg Kirov, also known by the cover name "Kursky". She also recounts rumours that Karla had a daughter by a mistress whom he had later sent to the Gulag. The daughter, Tatiana, was unstable and was confined to a mental institution.
Smiley flies to Hamburg and tracks down Claus Kretzschmar, an old associate of Leipzig and owner of the night club where the photograph was taken. He finds that Leipzig has been murdered by Karla's agents but manages to locate a recognition sign, in return for which Kretzschmar gives Smiley tape recordings of Leipzig and Kirov. Smiley hastens to Paris where, with help from his old colleague Peter Guillam, he gets Maria to safety before Soviet agents murder her too. He also learns that Kirov has been summoned to Moscow and probably killed for his indiscretions.
The transcribed tape of Kirov's confession to Leipzig shows that Karla is secretly diverting funds to a Swiss bank account using a commercial attaché named Grigoriev, of the Soviet Embassy in Bern. The money is used for the care of Karla's daughter, who has been committed to a Swiss psychiatric sanatorium under the faked citizenship papers of Maria's daughter. Smiley explains to Enderby that they may be able to blackmail Karla and force him to defect. Enderby authorises Smiley to mount an operation to secure the evidence from Grigoriev.
Smiley and Esterhase set up a covert team in Bern to keep Grigoriev under observation. They soon obtain evidence of his unofficial handling of funds for Karla and of an affair with an Embassy secretary. Smiley presents Grigoriev with the choice of cooperating or being reported to the Swiss authorities and, later, Karla. Grigoriev quickly confesses all he knows of the arrangements regarding Alexandra's care and of the weekly visits he makes to her. Among her "symptoms" is her insistence that she is actually called Tatiana and is the daughter of a powerful man who can make people disappear. Smiley writes a letter to Karla, which Grigoriev passes on instead of his usual report on Alexandra's treatment. The letter details Karla's illegal activities and offers him defection to the West and protection for Tatiana, or elimination by his rivals in Moscow Centre.
In a final scene, Karla, posing as a labourer, defects using one of the bridge crossings between East and West Berlin. Before giving himself up to the waiting Western agents, Karla stops and lights a cigarette. As he passes near Smiley he drops a gold cigarette lighter, a gift to George from his wife Ann, that Karla purloined from Smiley twenty years earlier in a Delhi prison. Smiley is sickened at having to use Karla's methods against him and does not pick up the lighter.
Characters
*Maria Andreyevna Ostrakova – a Russian émigrée in Paris
*Oleg Kirov alias Oleg Kursky – an agent deputed to find a suitable legend for Karla's daughter
*General Vladimir – Estonian émigré, former Soviet general, now a British spy
*Otto Leipzig – "The Magician", Estonian small-time crook who works with Vladimir
*
George Smiley
George Smiley OBE is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is a career intelligence officer with "The Circus", the British overseas intelligence agency. He is a central character in the novels ''Call for the Dead'', '' A Mu ...
– retired, former Acting Chief of British intelligence service, "the Circus".
*
Peter Guillam
Pierre Guillame, better known by the anglicised form Peter Guillam, is a fictional character in John le Carré's series of espionage novels. He first appears in ''Call for the Dead''. He is the trusted right-hand-man of George Smiley, the protagoni ...
– Smiley's former lieutenant, now head of the British Intelligence section in the Paris embassy
*
Connie Sachs Connie Sachs is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Sachs plays a key supporting role in the Karla Trilogy, ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'', ''The Honourable Schoolboy'', and ''Smiley's People''.
Biography
Sachs is an eccentric alcoho ...
– retired former analyst, now terminally ill in her
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
"
dacha
A dacha ( rus, дача, p=ˈdatɕə, a=ru-dacha.ogg) is a seasonal or year-round second home, often located in the exurbs of post-Soviet countries, including Russia. A cottage (, ') or shack serving as a family's main or only home, or an outbu ...
"
*Hilary - Former Circus secretary and Connie Sachs' lover
*Sir Oliver Lacon –
Whitehall
Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London. The road forms the first part of the A roads in Zone 3 of the Great Britain numbering scheme, A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea, London, Chelsea. It is the main ...
's Head Prefect to the intelligence service, aka Cabinet Office factotum
*Nigel Mostyn – young intelligence officer who took Vladimir's calls to the Circus
*Lauder Strickland - Circus fixer and Head of Personnel
*
Karla – Chief of the Thirteenth Directorate within Soviet Intelligence
*Sir Saul Enderby – Chief of The Circus
*Sam Collins - Current Head of Operations and Enderby's underling
*William (Villem) Craven – son of a deceased friend who performs a courier job for Vladimir
*Mikhel – Vladimir's émigré friend and former aide-de-camp at the Free Baltic library in
Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions.
Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...
*Elvira – Mikhel's wife
*
Toby Esterhase – formerly head of the Circus's "Lamplighter" section, now a dubious art gallery owner
*Claus Kretzschmar – Otto Leipzig's old associate, owner of a seedy night club in
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
*Grigoriev – Soviet bureaucrat in
Bern
german: Berner(in)french: Bernois(e) it, bernese
, neighboring_municipalities = Bremgarten bei Bern, Frauenkappelen, Ittigen, Kirchlindach, Köniz, Mühleberg, Muri bei Bern, Neuenegg, Ostermundigen, Wohlen bei Bern, Zollikofen
, website ...
*Krassky – Moscow courier who handles correspondence between Grigoriev and Karla
*Alexandra – Karla's schizophrenic daughter
*Mother Felicity –
mother superior
An abbess (Latin: ''abbatissa''), also known as a mother superior, is the female superior of a community of Catholic nuns in an abbey.
Description
In the Catholic Church (both the Latin Church and Eastern Catholic), Eastern Orthodox, Coptic ...
of the psychiatric facility in
Thun
, neighboring_municipalities= Amsoldingen, Heiligenschwendi, Heimberg, Hilterfingen, Homberg, Schwendibach, Spiez, Steffisburg, Thierachern, Uetendorf, Zwieselberg
, twintown =
, website = www.thun.ch
Thun (french: Thoune) ...
The novel
David Cornwell (a.k.a. John le Carré) writes out of his experience as an intelligence officer for both
MI5
The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...
and the
SIS (MI6). Here the character General Vladimir was partly modelled on Colonel
Alfons Rebane
Alfons Vilhelm Robert Rebane, known simply as Alfons Rebane (24 June 1908 – 8 March 1976) was an Estonian military commander. He was the most highly decorated Estonian military officer during World War II, serving in various Wehrmacht and Waffe ...
, an Estonian émigré who led the Estonian portion of
SIS's
Operation Jungle
Operation Jungle was a programme by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) early in the Cold War from 1949 to 1955 for the clandestine insertion of intelligence and resistance agents into Poland and the Baltic states. The agents were mo ...
in the
1950s
The 1950s (pronounced nineteen-fifties; commonly abbreviated as the "Fifties" or the " '50s") (among other variants) was a decade that began on January 1, 1950, and ended on December 31, 1959.
Throughout the decade, the world continued its re ...
.
One review speaks of the book's "purposefully quiet, slow, downright claustrophobic austerity", through which emerges "perhaps the greatest variety, texture, and integrity ever bestowed upon a series character". Though short sections deal with the experience of a few other characters, the main focus of the novel is upon Smiley himself, using different sorts of narrative to do so.
Though Le Carré portrays all those involved in espionage, on whichever side, as flawed people, it is their human weaknesses which interest him and keep the narrative moving. As one critic notes of this novel, "Ultimately Smiley's people are all those who choose humanity over ideology and individuals over institutions".
Adaptations
Television
![Smileys](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Smileys.jpg)
''Smiley's People'' was dramatized as a
six-part serial for television for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
as George Smiley. The screenplay was written by John le Carré and
. Two versions of this series exist: 1) the six-part UK version, which expands upon several important aspects of Smiley's objectives and Enderby's endorsement of these, and 2) the six-part
version in which much of the "back story" had been excised, for time.
as Smiley. ''Smiley's People'' was broadcast as three, one-hour episodes, from Thursday 20 October to Sunday 24 October 2011.
, who plays George Smiley in the film, said "I think they're whispering now that they might do ''Smiley's People''." Though nothing has yet come of the idea, it was still being refloated a decade later.