Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Le Carré takes the idea of the serious spy novel to another level – partly because Ambler had laid the groundwork and partly because Le Carré is an infinitely more gifted writer who was fortunate enough to have the Cold War as his canvas.
Why did you choose The Constant Gardener? It’s not overtly a spy novel.
There is actually only one spy in The Constant Gardener, an MI6 officer in Kenya, who I think at one point is involved with Quayle, the lead character, because he needs a piece of information about his dead wife.
I chose it simply because it was a huge influence on Typhoon [Cumming’s latest novel]. The idea of having a thriller that was also a love story, and then the political dimension as well. In The Constant Gardener, Le Carré is having a go at big pharmaceutical companies which are testing products on people in Africa. In Typhoon I was trying to let people know what is going on in terms of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the Uighur Muslim province in Northwest China.
Having said all that, the most important thing that I can do is to keep people reading the books that I write – to entertain them and interest them in the characters I have created. Writers shouldn’t be preachy. But if at the same time I can add a layer of political commitment to my books, or whatever you want to call it, then that’s a laudable goal, as far as I’m concerned.
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In the summer of 1995, Charles Cumming was approached for recruitment by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). A year later he moved to Montreal where he began working on a novel based on his experiences with MI6. His first book, A Spy By Nature, was published in the UK in 2001. His novel Typhoon, centred on the Uighur struggle for independence, was chosen by The New York Times as one of the Top 100 books of 2009. His latest book is The Trinity Six, a thriller about the Cambridge spies.
