Absolute Friends
 First edition | |
| Author | John le Carré |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Spy novel |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton |
Publication date | 2003 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 383 pp |
| ISBN | 0-340-83287-8 |
| OCLC | 53124233 |
| 823/.914 22 | |
| LC Class | PR6062.E33 A65 2004 |
| Preceded by | The Constant Gardener |
| Followed by | The Mission Song |
Absolute Friends is an espionage novel by John le Carré published in December 2003.
Plot summary
The book tells the story of Ted Mundy, the Pakistani-born son of a British army officer, who as a student becomes proficient in the German language. He joins a 1960s-era student protest group in West Berlin and becomes a lifelong friend of a West German student anarchist named Sasha. Having been brutally beaten by West Berlin police and ejected from Germany, Mundy fails at several careers; as a teacher at an English prep school, as a newspaper reporter, a radio interviewer and a novelist.
Eventually Mundy obtains a position with the British Council. Meanwhile, Sasha has defected to East Germany to become a member of the notorious Stasi secret police. On a trip to East Germany with a youth theatre group, Mundy and Sasha meet again. By this time Sasha has become totally disillusioned with the Communist Bloc and enlists the naïve Mundy to become a double agent. Sasha has access to state secrets and he recruits Mundy to help him smuggle them out of East Germany and deliver them to MI6, the British Secret Service. Their efforts contribute to the collapse of the GDR and eventual destruction of the Berlin Wall.
Later, Sasha and Mundy once again conspire in grandiose schemes to combat American military and industrial globalization. The two ideologues become pawns of the group they thought they were combating. They are framed with planted explosives by American and German security services, who brutally shoot them during a staged raid. After they are killed, they are portrayed as terrorists "with connections to Al-Qaeda", in efforts to convince European governments to support the United States in its "war on terror". After Mundy's death, Amory, his controller from the British intelligence service during his espionage years, tries to publicize the truth, but slander by the British government results in his story being totally discredited.
Characters
- Ted Mundy: The student activist, British spy and naïve ideologue.
- Sasha: His "Absolute friend"
- The Major: Mundy's alcoholic father
- Kate: Mundy's ex-wife
- Zara: Mundy's Turkish girlfriend.
- Mustafa: Zara's 11-year-old son
- Nicholas Amory: Mundy's MI6 case officer
- Jay O'Rourke: Amory's CIA counterpart
