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  • Published: 20 March 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241291733
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $24.00

The Tailor of Panama




The latest title from the bestselling author John le Carré to come into Penguin Modern Classics

Harry Pendel is the charismatic proprietor of Pendel and Braithwaite Limitada of Panama, through whose doors everyone who is anyone in Central America passes; Andrew Osnard, mysterious and fleshly, is a spy. His secret mission is two-pronged: to keep a watchful eye on the political manoeuvrings leading up to the American handover of the Panama Canal on 31st December 1999; and to secure for himself the immense private fortune that has until now churlishly eluded him.

  • Published: 20 March 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241291733
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $24.00

About the author

John le Carré

John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020. His posthumous novel Silverview was published in 2021.

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Praise for The Tailor of Panama

A work of rare brilliance

The Times

A tour de force in which almost every convention of the classic spy novel is violated

The New York Times Book Review