Absolute friends. John Le Carre. 2011.

The friends of the title are Ted Mundy, British soldier’s son born 1947 in a shining new independent Pakistan, and Sasha, refugee son of an East German Lutheran pastor and his wife who have sanctuary in the West.

The two men meet first as students in riot torn West Berlin of the late Sixties, again in the grimy looking glass of Cold War espionage and, most terribly, in today’s unipolar world of terror, counter-terror and the war of lies.