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We're so busy reading about real-life government intrigues -- historic and recent - that War and Piece has not had time to review several books it has received from publishers in the past few weeks. So here is a better review than I would have written in any case, of John Le Carre's latest, Absolute Friends, by Slate's Fred Kaplan.
For real-life spy stories, I highly recommend the unspeakably brilliant Charlie Wilson's War, by 60 Minutes producer George Crile, about the covert US war to arm the Afghan mujahadin. It reads like the front book end to the current mess coming out of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's one of the best reads I've had in years, no kidding.
And for more historic cases of US and British spy games in the Middle East, I recommend former CIA operative Miles Copeland's The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics, and Freya Stark's autobiography, The Coast of Incense, and a biography of Stark, Passionate Nomad. Stark, the Italian-born British Arabist who taught herself Arabic, Persian, and Turkish while exploring the Middle East starting in her thirties, served during World War II as an agent of British intelligence. For England, Stark conceived of and helped set up in Egypt and Iraq, a parallel network to the secret society, the Muslim Brotherhood, as natives of both countries were being courted by the Germans well aware of the Arabs' strafing under British colonial rule. British support for the creation of Israel in British-controlled Palestine -- a policy Stark opposed -- added to growing anti-British sentiment fueling rebellion against British colonial rule in the Muslim world. Copeland's book to some degree picks up where Stark's leaves off -- with the US and Britain fighting the Cold War in Nasser's Egypt, Syria and Lebanon in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Thanks to colleagues for suggestions for the above.
And it doesn't really fit with the Mid East theme of the others. But for one of the best, and funniest, post-Cold War, post-modern spy-ish novels, check out Malcolm Bradbury's Doctor Criminale, recommended by a dear friend in the business. In fact, I have to get my own copy of this. As one who has done my own fair share of scribbling and trying to chase down slippery facts on elusive figures and events for tiny magazines and BBC documentaries across Europe and Washington, I could relate to Bradbury's Francis Jay only too much.