George Smiley is the central figure of John le Carré’s espionage novels, a master spy within British intelligence who operates in the shadowy world of Cold War espionage. Portrayed as a small, bespectacled, and unassuming man, Smiley possesses a razor-sharp intellect and exceptional insight into human nature and deception.
Smiley’s world is one where trust is expensive, loyalty is fragile, and betrayal is never far. The Karla trilogy - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People - forms the core of Smiley’s story, detailing his hunt for Karla, the Soviet spymaster who is both opponent and mirror. Their game plays out over decades and across continents, a battle of intelligence and will that has no clear winner.
Unlike the action-hero spies of fiction, Smiley works through analysis, deception, and understanding of human weakness. He is a bureaucrat and academic in appearance, a man whose gentle demeanor masks a mind capable of dismantling entire intelligence networks. The tragedies of Smiley’s life - his wife’s affair with his superior, the constant betrayals by those he works with - give le Carré’s espionage fiction its emotional core: these are stories of broken people in a broken business.
Reading Order
See the complete George Smiley reading order for all books in the series.