Karla's Choice: A Novel of John le Carré's Circus

by Nick Harkaway

What about Karla? There’s a cast-iron rule that he’s unknowable. Karla is the opacity of the authoritarian regime, its capricious violence, its ubiquity, its weight. Like the shark in Jaws, he only becomes less alarming the more often you see him up close.

On the other hand, the pressing need to choose compassion – be it for conscripted enemies, refugees, future generations or ourselves – has never been more stark. Eric Hobsbawn said the twentieth century was short, but you could answer that we’re still waiting for it to end.

And so it goes: things change, and what we remember with absolute clarity turns out to be a shape in the mist.

By now, parts of it at least had set in her mind in shapes that were slightly different from what had actually taken place; from what she had seen, thought and done. Memory was a liar to itself.