LYUBIMOV (Mikhail).
[Title in Cyrillic, translating as] The Life and Adventures of Alex Wilkie, Spy.
A near fine copy, inscribed by the author “For dear David and Jane from a no good spy. Michael. 18.05.94” Lyubimov was a career spy, expelled from Britain in the 1960s after a failed attempt to turn a cipher operator. In 1993 he had helped Cornwell try to understand the new Moscow criminal culture, by introducing him to a big gangster known as Dima (the name is also used in Our kind of Traitor). Sisman records how, after an injudicious question by Cornwell “Dima began speaking so softly that the interpreter had to lean close to his mouth to hear and continued for a long time. When at last he was done, the interpreter appeared embarrassed as he searched for the right reply. ‘I regret to tell you’ he said finally: ‘Mr. Dima says’ ‘Fuck Off’’.”
This is his first novel, about a Russian agent in London.
From the library of David Cornwell aka John Le Carré.
Maggs Bros. Ltd., Catalogue 1526, John Le Carré: Books from The Library of Jane and David Cornwell at Tregiffian, Item 263.
