The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a 1963 Cold War spy novel by the British author John le Carré. It depicts Alec Leamas, a British intelligence officer, being sent to East Germany as a faux defector to sow disinformation about a powerful East German intelligence officer. As with le Carré's previous novels Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, the novel features the fictitious British intelligence organisation, "The Circus", and its agents George Smiley and Peter Guillam. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold portrays Western espionage methods as morally inconsistent with Western democracy and values. The novel received critical acclaim at the time of its publication and became an international best-seller; it was selected as one of the 100 Best Novels by Time magazine in 2005. In 1965, Martin Ritt directed a cinematic adaptation, with Richard Burton as Leamas. Characters and events from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold are revisited in A Legacy of Spies, le Carré's 2017 novel centering on an ageing Guillam.