Re-reading this John Le Carre - one of the lesser known Smiley tales - it's truly wonderful, mainly set in Asia. It shows how good a writer David Cornwall was and extraordinarily ignored by the Booker Prize (like Graham Greene, JK Rowling; Gerald Seymour). Did they ever make a film of this? They surely should have done. Great story. Stopped my annual read of the 6 Booker finalists - half way through The Bee Sting, which is good - but I'm now on the winner Prophet Song (so far excellent).