Premium
Secret Cold Warriors
Author(s) -
Snyder Robert Lance
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12245
Subject(s) - carr , complicity , cold war , secrecy , narrative , power (physics) , smiley , covert , law , history , art history , philosophy , art , literature , political science , politics , ecology , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics , biology
Harking back to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), John le Carré’s A Legacy of Spies (2017) reexamines the covert sphere’s code of expediency while also drawing attention to a generational chasm between the Cold War and the present era. Le Carré’s critique in Legacy focuses on retired agent Peter Guillam, once George Smiley’s protégé, who in his eighties is forced to recognize while poring over files half a century old his complicity in a regime of state‐sponsored secrecy. His failure to accept responsibility for his actions in the past significantly extends le Carré’s ethical concerns in such post‐Cold War novels as A Most Wanted Man (2008), Our Kind of Traitor (2010), and A Delicate Truth (2013). Like these narratives, Legacy revolves around the individual citizen’s obligation to speak truth to power in an age of raison d’état propaganda.