Archive for the ‘The Mission Song’ Category
The Mission Song by John le CarréMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The book deals with another naive character created by John Le Carre. The underlying theme that John Le Carre seems to bring about is how the naive and soft characters fail miserably in spying and how one needs to be cut-throat without any scruples to be a good spy. The protagonist is a bastard son of Belgian priest and a local girl in East Congo. He is brought up by his father and in the process he picks up a variety of languages.
Using this skill and his relatively fair skin he becomes a translator in UK where the Intelligence Bureau finds him work. He is ask to preside as a translator for a deal that the agency is getting into with one of the leaders in Congo.
In the meantime the translator has fallen out with his high profile while spouse and has found solace in a nurse from Congo whom he meets during his translation for an African patient at a hospital.
After helping out the Intelligence Bureau his stuck by remorse by his own thoughts and his interaction with the nurse from Congo.
He tries to rectify the situation by meeting many people at high places. The end of the book is how different people react when he reaches out to them to correct the wrong that he helped setting in motion.
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