“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

For newcomers, I recommend “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” (1963). A career-making sensation, this novel, le Carré’s third, allowed him to quit his day job as a spy under diplomatic cover in Bonn, West Germany. Graham Greene called it “the best spy story I have ever read.” It serves as an overture for le Carré’s subsequent body of work; all his themes are here, in taut, gorgeous form.

Unlike some later books, which can dawdle (charmingly) in their initial pages, “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” drops right into the action, with our hero Alec Leamas, a gloomy, middle-aged alcoholic and spy, huddled at a chilly checkpoint on the Federal Republic side of the newly erected Berlin Wall. He’s sneaking …

Why reading fiction is therapeutic

Part 2

A fictional story written by seven medical bloggers