In the early 1960s, le Carre and another important British novelist, Len Deighton, set new standards for the spy thriller. The early years of the Cold War had seen a multitude of fictional spies who, like James Bond, tended to be larger than life and have amazing adventures in a secret world of technological marvels. In The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and Deighton's The Ipcress File (1962), a more realistic kind of spy novel found a large and responsive audience. Le Carre was then still working in the British secret service; he used a pen name instead of his own because his government required him to do so. The unexpected success of his hard-nosed, no-nonsense account of intrigue, betrayal, and fear earned him enough money to quit his government job and devote himself to his writing.

Over the years, he has created a fictional...