June 20, 2004

The Absolute Friends of Le Carre’s nineteenth novel are Ted Mundy and Sasha, two men vastly different in temperament, but similar in their capacity for loyalty and deep love. However if that sounds like homosexuality, it is not. Le Carre has too much going on in his mind and perceptions to need fillers of eye-popping sex.

The two first meet in Berlin of the sixties. Mundy, born on August 14, 1947, loses his mother when he is born. The grieving father, a major in the now Pakistan Army, lives in his cups, and brings up his son first in northern Pakistan, and later in England, where Mundy becomes a bright but misfit schoolboy in a boarding school. Later, he is a dropout from Oxford, and carries a recommendation from his highly politicized girlfriend to Sasha, then a student leader in Berlin.

While Mundy is thrown into politics by fate which has taken advantage of his passivity, Sasha is a red hot radical by choice. There are other contrasts: Mundy is sober and cool-headed, Sasha is passionate, a dreamer, and tends to be credulous. They get on well, however, and during a crackdown by the German police, Mundy saves Sasha’s life, winning his lifelong gratitude and trust. He is deported to England where he finds employment with the British Council.

Mundy is recruited as a spy and a double agent and his job at the British Council serves as a facade. He is supposed to be feeding information through Sasha to Stasi (East Germany’s ministry for state security) when actually he is providing information to the British. Sasha too is a double agent, pretending to work for Stasi when actually he is passing information to the West. As they collaborate in their work, their friendship thrives.

When the Berlin wall comes down, the two friends reach the end of their vocation. They become great have beens who were a force in castrating communism, and terminating the Cold War, but were no longer the anointed. In the void left by the devils of the recent past, even more insidious things were creeping in. New imperialisms were rearing their heads. New wars were started in the name of principles, and countries were colonized in the name of globalization.

No longer does Mundy remain a passive observer, driven into the playing field by strong influences — as he was in the days when he was spying on communism. This time he is really angry and marches with the Germans, who know about war, are alerted by the intimations of despotism, and outraged at the injustice of the Iraq war.

Post 9/11, and Le Carre is finally noticing the Muslim people — and Pakistan, where the hero has spent his childhood. When the story opens, Mundy has found a down-and-out Turkish Muslim woman in Munich, and is living with her and her son, Mustafa.

Mundy’s eclectic background and his loving nature ensure that boundaries of class, race, or creed do not exist for him. Sasha’s wooing of Mundy for Dimitri’s great mission is classic. Sasha’s enthusiastic urging, and Mundy’s sceptical questioning of Sasha, to get to the bottom of the latter’s apparently changed fortunes, who Dimitri is, and why Sasha wants him to join him, are quintessentially Le Carre, and even such scenes alone can make it worthwhile to read Le Carre. Their uncovering of temperament, attitudes, and propulsion in the direction of unmasking the motive are quite fascinating.

I remember, in the days when I was reading Saul Bellow avidly, I was enthralled by the profusion of ideas in everything he wrote — ideas that came like fireworks. In Le Carre the abundance seems more organic —developed in his perception of character, in his dialogues, and in the difference between characters as revealed in their interaction. And of course, those who love action and are addicted to good stories are never disappointed.

However, in reading a book, much of the responsibility for its enjoyment lies with the reader. If you are planning to read Absolute Friends you need to be properly equipped, that is, you must know at least the general drift of the history and politics of Europe in the 20th century and the global issues that stem from them in the present times. If you are completely innocent on the subject, do not blame Le Carre for writing a book in which the action seems confusing.

Absolute Friends
By John Le Carre
Hodder & Stoughton Available with Liberty Books (Pvt) Ltd,
3 Rafiq Plaza, M.R. Kayani Road, Saddar, Karachi
Tel: 021-5683026
Email: libooks@cyber.net.pk
Website: www.libertybooks.com
ISBN 0-340-83423-4
383pp. Rs195

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