SOURCE: “Cash and le Carré,” in New Statesman and Society, May 12, 1995, p. 41.

In the following review, Tonkin briefly compares Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard with John le Carré’s Our Game.

Timothy Mo and John le Carré have both written novels that pit conscience against corruption in a lawless post-imperial world, “without faith or anti-faith”. Look at how these two books have been published, though, and you see a curious mirror-effect. Both authors have behaved in ways that flatly contradict their novels’ drift. Mo the sneering fatalist has acted like a hero; while Le Carré the knightly champion of rights has hitched his name to big-power bullying.

Mo’s cloacal romp Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard —set in a Philippines portrayed as one vast sewer—cynically assumes that the rich and violent will dump on the poor for ever, whatever label the big shots happen to wear. “Same scheiss only...