The Spy Novels of John Le Carré Balancing Ethics and Politics

Using espionage as a metaphor for politics, John le Carre explores the dilemmas that confront individuals and governments as they act during and in the aftermath of the Cold War. His characters struggle to maintain personal and professional integrity while facing conflicting personal, institutional, and ideological loyalties. In this work, author Myron Aronoff interprets the ambiguous ethical and political implications of the work of John le Carre, revealing him to be one of the most important political writers of our time. Aronoff shows how through his writing, le Carre poses the difficult question of to what extent are western governments justified in pursuing raison d'etre without undermining the very democratic freedoms that they claim to defend. He also draws parallels between the self parody of le Carre and that of the 17th-century Dutch artist Jan Steen, and explains how it expresses a unique form of ambiguous moralism.