Set partly in Canada, Le Carre's new novel tells the moving story of a man ennobled by tragedy and explores the dark side of unbridled capitalism.

John Le Carré

John Le Carre

Ladybird Books Ltd

Penguin Books Ltd

Penguin Canada

Extension Services Collection, Toronto, ©2001

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

First THUS, 2001

***Manufactured in Canada* / First published in Viking by Penguin Books Canada Limited, 2001**

Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, John le Carré's new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime.
Tessa's much older husband, Justin, a career diplomat at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive. The plot was vaguely based on a real-life case in Kano, Nigeria.
A master chronicler of the deceptions and betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, le Carré portrays, in The Constant Gardener, the dark side of unbridled capitalism. His eighteenth novel is also the profoundly moving story of a man whom tragedy elevates. Justin Quayle, amateur gardener and ineffectual bureaucrat, seemingly oblivious to his wife's cause, discovers his own resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.
The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time.

After his young wife Tessa's murder in Kenya, British diplomat Justin Quale investigates her death and the disappearance of her African colleage. He eventually discovers that Tessa had uncovered a scheme involving a multinational pharmaceutical company that unethically tests drugs on the local populace. Strong language

2023-06-28