Comment by edbaskerville

Way too many John Le Carré novels (and his memoir). Not escapist enough, frankly—it adds up to a very dismal appraisal of geopolitics, with plenty of foreshadowing of what the world has become: the kleptocracy in the ruins of the Soviet state; having fought communism, the need to now fight capitalism; and this one I saved from The Little Drummer Girl: "What are we to become, I wonder? A Jewish homeland, or an ugly little Spartan state?"