A Perfect Spy

A Perfect Spy is a 1986 novel by the British writer John le Carré (the pen name of David Cornwell), widely regarded by critics as his most autobiographical work. The novel centers on a father and son. The father, Rick, is a first-rate con artist who over the decades drifts through a bewildering variety of trades—food speculation, real-estate development, pension schemes, parliamentary campaigns—and whose silver tongue and gift for manipulating people always see him through, surrounded by loyal followers. In his later years, on the brink of bankruptcy, Rick realizes that the only remaining "asset" he can rely on is his son, Pym, whose reputation in British diplomatic circles is steadily rising. Pym is sensitive and gifted, determined to escape his father's life built on lies, yet in that very escape he naturally takes up another path of deception—he is a spy, and in the era of Cold War confrontation he serves more than one side at once. Torn by ever more complex missions, loyalties, and emotions, he finally chooses to abandon everything and vanish alone, sitting down to write his story in an attempt to make sense of a life built up, layer by layer, out of lies. Moving back and forth between reality and memory across many parts of Europe, the novel weaves the loyalties and betrayals among father and son, mentors and friends, superiors and subordinates into a dense, airtight web, asking whether a person who has never truly lived a real life can still find himself. This is Li Jingyi's Chinese translation.