#45 in Spy & espionage
The Looking Glass War
- 272
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“The Looking Glass War” is a bleak, unglamorous spy novel about a service living on past glories. A small, outdated branch of British military intelligence, known as the Department, botches attempt after attempt to check a defector’s report of Soviet missiles in East Germany. George Smiley stays mostly in the background. It suits readers who prefer espionage stripped of all romance.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Looking Glass War is a 1965 spy novel by John le Carré. Written in response to the positive public reaction to his previous novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the book explores the unglamorous nature of espionage and the danger of nostalgia. The book tells the story of an incompetent British military intelligence agency known as The Department and its multiple botched attempts to verify a Communist defector's story of a Soviet missile buildup in East Germany. Some editions hyphenate "Looking Glass".
Reading order · George Smiley series
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Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.2 across 86 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 37% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Spy & espionage average of 7.6. That is how 7.5 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.0 | 8 | 9% |
| Hardcover | 7.3 | 78 | 91% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Looking Glass War?
It has 272 pages — shorter than 64% of the ranked books in Spy & espionage.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Spy & espionage — with scores between 7.4 and 7.5, closest to this book.
