Our Kind of Traitor

Just finished “Our Kind of Traitor” by John le Carre – I thought it was brand new, as I picked it up off the New Books shelf of our Library, but it was actually published in 2010. Well, it was excellent, as usual, but as I have seen in Le Carre’s other recent books, he increasingly indicts major distortions of society caused by massively outsized greed, corruption and international criminality.

In this book, a British academic and his lawyer girlfriend are drawn into helping Dima, a Russian vor or mafia-type, who wishes to defect to Britain to save himself and achieve revenge on a criminal kingpin who has killed Dima’s right-hand man. Dima is “the greatest money launderer in the world” and crusaders within the British Secret Service attempt to use his defection to clean up the financially corrupted British establishment, but they are naturally opposed by those who benefit from the corruption. The novel, intensely readable and absorbing, ends powerfully and unhappily.

le Carre asserts in comments on The Constant Gardener and Our Kind of Traitor that he does not exaggerate the extent of corruption, but if anything, understates it. Interested? Here’s a lengthy and very thoughtful interview, from Democracynow.com in which he discusses these views (http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/11/exclusive_british_novelist_john_le_carr)

A quick, thought-provoking read - highly recommended.