Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, John le Carré's new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's much older husband, Justin, a career diplomat at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive. What he might know and what he ultimately learns make him suspect among his own colleagues and a target for the profiteers who killed his wife. A master chronicler of the deceptions and betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, le Carré portrays, in The Constant Gardener, the dark side of unbridled capitalism. His eighteenth novel is also the profoundly moving story of a man whom tragedy elevates. Justin Quayle, amateur gardener and ineffectual bureaucrat, seemingly oblivious to his wife's cause, discovers his own resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.
The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time.
"Le Carré is more than just a great storyteller. He captures the Zeitgeist itself."
TOM WOLFE "He is one of the half-dozen best novelists now working in English."
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
"A brilliant linguistic artist with a keen eye for the exotic and not-so-exotic locale, [and a] crafty moralizer with an occasional bent for sentiment..."
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"No other contemporary novelist has more durably enjoyed the twin badges of being both well-read and well-regarded."
SCOTT TUROW
"Le Carré has a great talent for entangling his audien