Spycatcher

Copies of Spycatcher by Peter Wright (General Publishing) are washing up in great numbers these days in the secondhand bookstores, and so may be had for a song. This book, the memoir of a British spy, is an unsettling testament to the power of fiction—in this case the fiction of John LeCarré, whose invented world of spy and counter-spy so completely subsumes its real-world counterpart that Wright's book can be read as a straightforward commentary on, and validation of, LeCarré's work. Reading Spycatcher is a dizzying experience: a book "real" enough to be banned by a frightened British government, while its substance fits so seamlessly into the "unreal" world of fiction. Had there been no LeCarré, would there have been a Peter Wright? Quite probably: no.