George Smiley Goes to America: Nick Harkaway on The Taper Man

Smiley goes to America. Roy Bland goes to Leningrad. And Nick Harkaway goes back inside his father's Circus.

In Paul Burke's first interview as Spybrary's Head of Fiction, he sits down with Nick Harkaway to talk about The Taper Man. It's Nick's second novel set in John le Carré's Circus and the follow-up to Karla's Choice. The year is 1965. Polyakov has arrived in London and the pieces are moving into place for Tinker Tailor. George Smiley is in Los Angeles, about as far from home as he could be, chasing a Moscow mole hunt. In Leningrad, Roy Bland is running a dangerous operation..

Nick talks about absorbing Smiley before he could read: his father read pages aloud across the table to his mother every day. He also explains the family meeting where he agreed to take on the series, and why Smiley's world comes with strict rules about what can and can't happen in it.

What you'll hear

• How growing up with Smiley read aloud every day shaped Nick's ear for the books
• The family meeting, and his brother Simon's nudge, that turned "I won't do it" into "all right"
• Why a true CIA story about an inflatable decoy spy could never appear in a Smiley novel
• The "Indiana Jones warehouse" rule for writing Karla: every answer should open up more questions
• Inventing the Taper Man as new Circus lore, plus le Carré's gift of the term "honey trap"
• Smiley as an "archaeologist of espionage" and the "original sin" at the heart of every Circus story
• Roy Bland's backstory and why The Taper Man goes in for proactive spying
• Hungary, Finland and the idea that history doesn't come packaged in neat periods
• A not-quite-CIA, illegals in America, and the question of who counts as a "proper American"
• What comes next: a third Circus book is under contract, a Harkaway book is also on the way, and his thoughts on a WWII Smiley or a modern le Carré