NEWS/BLOG

The End of Summer

Welcome to all those who’ve recently signed up as affiliates. 

Summer is over, and I’ve just heard a weather forecast predicting a 30% chance of snow tomorrow here in Santa Fe. This would be unusual, but it feels as though it could happen.

For my summer reading, I continued with John Le Carre, whose books are, I think, worthwhile for their elegant language as well as for the suspense. I also believe Le Carre is keenly aware of cultural differences as well as political and historical matters. A couple volumes that I stumbled onto recently also provide insight into the troubled history and raw feelings of the people in the breakaway republics in the Caucasus, specifically Chechnya.

Our Game is the odyssey of a former British agent, Tim Cramer, who has retired to an inherited estate and vineyard in the English countryside. An agent he trained has disappeared and evidence points to Cramer as having been responsible. Meanwhile, Cramer’s young live-in girlfriend has also disappeared. What follows is not only a hair-raising tale but one in which the main character, a not very likeable sort at the onset, transforms himself into what we might call a hero. Written in the 1990s after the end of the cold war, the book was a best seller, yet does not seem dated.

More recently, Le Carre wrote A Most Wanted Man The story takes place in Hamburg, Germany, a beautiful old city where foreigners are generally welcomed. The “wanted man” is a young Chechnyan, who is soon surrounded by an international cast of characters. A Turkish immigrant and his mother befriend him; a young liberal, upper-class German woman becomes his lawyer and a British banker appears because a large sum of money is involved. Secret agents from Germany, Britain and the U.S. with interests of their own enter the picture and the conflict evolves from there.

Please - let us know what you’re reading and where you’re going. Keep sending news and resources of interest to expats and prospective expats. Thanks.