Title: The Panama Tailor - John le Carré - book
Summary :
Harry Pendel, an illegitimate child of Jewish-Irish descent, charismatic owner of Pendel & Braithwaite Co., Limitada, tailors close to royalty based in Panama, is contacted one day by the mysterious Andrew Osnard, a young, unscrupulous spy charged with monitoring the evolution of the political landscape, in anticipation of the return of the Panama Canal by the Americans at noon on December 31, 1999.
Osnard, who knows everything about Pendel's troubled past and his current financial difficulties, blackmails him into becoming his informant. Who better than Pendel, whose shop is visited by all the important men in Panama day after day, could indeed inform him about the rumors and gossip? But Pendel, a true tailor with a well-honed sales pitch, will take stock of the stakes and, rather than simply cross-check his information, decides to start embroidering, hemming, patching, building his reports with great precision, and ultimately redrawing the silhouette of a shady Panama from head to toe.
Based on these illusions, his wife, his best friend, his loyal employee, but also British diplomats, American soldiers and the barons of international finance and the press will soon find themselves caught up in a huge geopolitical affair from which no one will emerge unscathed.
John le Carré , born in 1931, studied at the universities of Bern and Oxford, taught at Eton, and worked briefly for British intelligence during the Cold War. For six decades, he devoted himself to writing. He died in 2020 at the age of 89.
