Beschreibung:

John Le Carré [David John Moore Cornwell] Signed first editions of the "Karla Trilogy", additionally signed by the East German spymaster who was a model for Karla: i) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1974, FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY JOHN LE CARRÉ AND MARKUS WOLF ii) The Honourable Schoolboy. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977, FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY JOHN LE CARRÉ AND MARKUS WOLF iii) Smiley's People. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1979, FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY JOHN LE CARRÉ AND MARKUS WOLF 3 volumes, 8vo (215 x 132mm.), each in original cloth, pictorial dust jacket, previous owner's inscription on front free endpaper of the first, jackets lightly rubbed at head and foot of backstrip, protected in glassine wrappers, OTHERWISE FINE COPIES [with:] Printed note on the circumstances in which the books were signed by Markus Wolf, dated June 2021 Markus Wolf, "the man without a face", has long been identified as the model for John Le Carré's fictional Russian spymaster Karla, although the connection was always denied by the author. Wolf was born to a German Jewish father who was a member of the Communist Party, and in 1933 when the Nazis came to power he and his father emigrated to Russia. During the Second World War, Wolf was part of Comintern. After the War he was sent to Berlin as a journalist in the Soviet Occupied Zone and joined the Ministry for State Security (Stasi). He rose to become head of the Stasi's Foreign Intelligence Division, running a department of some 30,000 agents. He achieved great success in penetrating West German government, political and business circles with a prolific ring of spies. Fleeing Germany shortly before reunification in 1990 he sought refuge in Russia. He was subsequently arrested and charged with treason by the German Supreme Court, but was given a suspended sentence and lived out his final years writing books. The current consignor met Wolf in 2005, when he was controversially invited to speak at a leading private member's club in London. These books were signed on a return trip to Berlin in 2006, the year of Wolf's death.