The Tailor of Panama

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• Format: Hardcover
• ISBN: 158060059X
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Knopf
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A pure classic

Written with endless wit and some dark humor, Le Carre proves himself again as a master of words as he plots a classic spy story- and the greatness of it is that this is both a spy story and an anti-spy story. Do no except Tom-Clancy-like-action since this novel is about the humans and not the missiles. Harry Pendel is an anti-hero, a man drowning himself in a sea of lies, lying to the British intelligence- fabricating tales upon tales, lying to his beloved wife, lying to himself. With a multitude of conspiracy fabrications of all sorts, this story almost becomes a wry satire about the spy world. Panama city and its characters are portrayed in a rich and elegant manner. The dialogues are complicated and brilliant; loaded with so much tidbits of fiction that Le Carre's mind seems to be a bottomless pit of ideas. I'm sure that many people who expected more action gave it low reviews because of this- explaining the surprisingly low average rating. But the novel is not uneventful, and it contains a cynical plot of intrigue and greed, and some satirical jabs at some imperialistic desires still present in some dark elderly western power holders. This is literature, subtle, elegant and stylish, humorous and at its best. And poor pathetic Harry Pendel, with all his weaknesses, is a character as human as can be, and one you can only sympathize with.

An incredible, funny, touching tragedy

I read this book for the first time two months ago, and now I've read it again. My second reading was inspired by the fact that I was part way through the book the first time before I realized what an incredible book it was. So I wanted to read it again from the start with a proper sense of appreciation. "The Tailor of Panama" is purportedly a spy thriller, but the spy story is actually just the framework on which John le Carré weaves his amazing study of human nature. And the human characteristics which are dominant are not ones that the human race should be proud of. We are presented with large amounts of greed, dishonesty, jealousy, cruelty, selfish lust, corruption, apathy, frailty and stupidity. On top of that we are presented with some of the less attractive conditions for human existence: poverty, suffering, guilt and sickness. But the amazing thing is that John le Carré writes about these human characteristics and conditions with a great deal of humor and understanding. And he does provide a few glimpses of love, altruism and generosity. So even though the story ends tragically it is for the most part a funny and touching story, and this makes the book very readable. Another strength of the book is John le Carré's masterful command of the English language. He writes beautiful descriptions, and has a surprising and inventive way with words. I often found myself delighted with one sentence after another, each one saying something in a way I hadn't realized was possible. The way in which the plot is slowly but surely expanded is also very satisfying. We start out with the daily lives of a few seemingly ordinary people. But then the seemingly ordinary people are shown to be less and less ordinary, and at the same time more and more people are added to the story, and the scope of the story expands until high-level international politics of the worst sort get involved. Yet another positive aspect of the book is the large amount of very interesting information about life in Panama and how Panama society works. In this respect the book can be considered to be an insider's tourist guide to Panama. Highly recommended - and to be read slowly and savored. Finally, my opinion as to why there have been a lot of reviewers who have given this book a low rating: I'm guessing that many of these reviewers expected a straight James-Bond-style spy thriller and were disappointed because "The Tailor of Panama" is definitely not a simple spy thriller. Another "problem" may be that most of the main characters are very British, and the book is written in British English. The dialog between the characters contains a lot of British slang and British expressions. To me this adds to the charm of the book, but I'm guessing that some readers find this irritating. Rennie Petersen

Made me laugh, made me cry, scared the hell out of me...

One of the best novels I have ever read. Makes "the spy who came in from the cold" seem like a cardboard cutout of a novel in comparison. After having lived in Latin America I found the description of Panama vivid and very romantic. The characters are exaggerated and entering the realm of caricature but were real enough to evoke my empathy and make me squirm with embarrassment at the recognition of some of my own failings, and laugh at those I don't yet admit to. Above all the weakness and sadness in some of these characters' lives *is* very real for many people and as such parts of the book had me close to tears. I can't help thinking that the people who didn't like this book are either looking for the simple gratification of suspense and discovery found in "true" spy novels or are frightened of such a frank exposition of human frailty.

In defense of this book

i think perhaps many of the reviews here miss the point of this novel. It is not, I agree, Le Carre's best thriller. It is instead a satire, not about Panama, but about the propensity we all have to believe our own lies, and those whose lies justify actions we want to take anyway. It has been said here that he misrepresents Panama while sparing the west(England), also that le Carre is tired and out of ideas since the cold war ended. Far from the truth. His writing style may be slow for those raised on TV, but it has a point. His last 3 novels(Our Game, The Night Manager, and this one) can be seen together as a manysided indictment of the West at the end of the Cold War. They are among his best novels as literature, and should be read not as thrillers, but as examinations of wasted lies, of the arrogance of the West and it's willingness to sacrifice innocents for political and economic conveniences, of the corruption of money at the center of our intitutions at the century's end. Thank you Mr. Le Carre, for doing more than sitting back and gloating on the so called victory of the West.

The master strikes again; a fiendishly delightful read

As a writer myself, I experience a variety of feelings when reading the works of others. Sometimes it's a great deal of frustration and impatience, occasionally some anger, and less often then I'd like, real pleasure. Rarely, though, do I feel jealousy, but such is the case with The Tailor of Panama. It's that good.Several words spring to mind when talking about the spy novels of LeCarre: difficult, impenetrable, obtuse. Honestly now - how many have you actually read through to the conclusion? I suspect that the circuitous construction and non-linear plot progressions are deliberate, intended not so much to precisely tell a story as to convey a feeling, that of actually being involved in some tortuously complex web of deceit and doublecross. After all, if George Smiley himself is confused, discomfited and suspicious, why shouldn't we experience similar vagueness as we follow his exploits?In that regard, The Tailor of Panama represents a significant departure for the universally-acknowledged master of the espionage thriller, because it is easily the most accessible of his novels. That's good news in itself, but it gets better, because this singular gem of a novel may also be his best written. It is also based on a unique premise. How to put this without blowing the surprises, of which there are many...One of the worst fears of an intelligence case officer is that the asset he is controlling is a double agent loyal to the other side. That concept is central to more spy stories than it is possible to count, as is the notion of a mole in your own organization. In The Tailor of Panama, LeCarre presents a new dilemma, a situation that, at least in my limited familiarity with the genre, hasn't been tackled before. Which is all I plan to say about it.The first part of the book is actually humorous, as LeCarre casts a wry eye - and ear - at the bombast of expatriate Britishers trying to maintain traditional civility in uncivil lands. In this case, that ! kind of overblown pomposity has implanted itself within British intelligence, with disastrous results; the last part of the book is anything but funny, as we witness the degree of catastrophe that can flow from the kind of carelessness engendered by an out-of-control sense of self-importance.Set against the backdrop of the Panama Canal's impending handover to the local citizenry, it's a great story, full of huge but understated surprises and soundly buttressed by brilliant and controlled writing that is a joy to read and, for many passages, to re-read. Absent the kind of dizzying complexities that require such an investment in other of his novels, The Tailor of Panama drags us willingly into intrigue gone very wrong even as we wince at the awful events that precipitate out of the collision of one man's towering arrogance and another's desperate vulnerability. One only hopes that the character of anti-hero Andrew Osnard returns in a future volume to wreak more havoc for our amusement.