If you’ve ever watched Tinker Tailor Solider Spy then you can imagine my surprise when I found out that A Legacy of Spies was written by the same author!

 I always find treasures at the ‘Books by Kilo’ sale. Completely aware of a raging pandemic, I journeyed with my friend to a book fair much against my parent’s wishes sometime mid-June. Of course this bit of information may see much dismay but it was totally worth it. We were armed with gloves, masks and sanitizers, we picked a weekday and went in the afternoon and found ourselves in a room full of books and books and five other people. In case you were wondering, this is called Paradise.

To save you the trouble of wondering if this book is any good, let me enlighten you on the fact that John leCarre served in the British Secret Service himself both MI5 and MI6 (I honestly didn’t know there was a difference until now). So of course this book is legitimately brilliant!

The book is sort of backwards. The crime is committed ,of course ,but till the very end we still don’t know why, although we do know the who. Peter Guillam is a retired spy, although once a spy always a spy. When an old case, comes back ,it brings with it memories of a great love and many betrayals set in the cold war where nobody really knew who their real enemy was.

Peter Guillam recounts his spy days through the report he must read, taking us with him and goes back in time to the old spy days. Much like me in that way.

I’ve spent five years of my life living on a plane. I’ve seen so much that sometimes when I look back at my pictures, it feels almost unreal that any of that has even happened. This year was always meant to be special. It is definitely going down in history as the year of The Pandemic but for me it will always be The Transition. The year I left behind everything I knew for five years and came back home. Isn’t that what 2020 has been like though, going back to find answers and question everything? Just going back.

I throw the word home around quite loosely. Like Peter Guilam, our protagonists, home is a feeling and never a place. He still struggles to find his place in the world outside the spy game and I’m still trying to find my footing in a 9-5 life and no longer living out of my suitcase.

I left Dubai for many reasons, one mostly being because I was never meant to stay. Other being, I had to find myself outside of the world I was living in. Outside the continuous travelling, outside the night life of the vibrant city, outside of the loneliness, outside the new friendships and heartbreaking failed ones but mostly out of a failed relationship that I didn’t know I would survive the way I did.

Well there are many more books to review for us to get to know each other better.

Till then, grab a copy of A Legacy of Spies and discover the Cold War like never before!