Nick Harkaway sends George Smiley to 1965 America in The Taper Man, his second novel in his father's universe since John le Carré died in 2020

Nick Harkaway has written his second novel in his late father's spy universe. The Taper Man, published this week in the UK and on November 17 in the US by Viking, sends George Smiley to the United States in 1965 — two years after the events of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold — to chase a Soviet agent and collide with "The Cousins," John le Carré's fictionalized version of the CIA.

The title refers to a deep-cover agent left behind when a spy ring is busted, biding time and awaiting instructions. Smiley, the unobtrusive spymaster of "The Circus," le Carré's version of MI6, gets what Harkaway calls a "mouse-eye view" of Los Angeles, whose scale, landscapes and attitudes seem alien to him. The Cousins, by contrast, are "warriors in this Cold War, not shadows" — prepared to move fast and break things, including moral boundaries, against the watching-and-listening ethos of British intelligence.

Harkaway — real name Nicholas Cornwell, youngest of David Cornwell's four sons — says writing a Cold War story in 2026 is like "writing in the mirror." The global situation, he told the Associated Press at his north London house, is "weirdly the same in some slightly alarming ways, it's weirdly different in some alarming ways," and "many of the same discussions are carrying on."

The inheritance is literal. Smiley's voice was among the first Harkaway ever heard: his father read aloud from works in progress. "While I was acquiring language, I was getting Smiley 90 minutes, 2 hours a day," he says. His first continuation novel, Karla's Choice in 2024, met reviews that, by his own account, began "I really expected to hate this novel, and I didn't." He was acutely aware, he says, of the risk he was running by writing in a beloved universe.

The new book brings back the spy chief Control and fleshes out minor characters, notably Roy Bland, the left-wing firebrand turned MI6 agent who appeared in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. There are no throwaway characters in his father's writing, Harkaway says: "The taxi driver, the bellhop, everybody has an interior life that you can return to." Edward Kirke, his editor at Viking, calls the book "profoundly intelligent" and infused with the le Carré spirit, with "this beautiful moral murkiness."

Le Carré, an MI6 agent turned author, became a strong critic of US foreign policy in the post-9/11 "war on terror" years. "My dad's relationship with the U.S., and U.S. intelligence, was tempestuous, as it was with everywhere that he loved," Harkaway says. "Obviously, inevitably, his greatest scorn is reserved for the U.K., which he adored."

Harkaway made his name with science-fiction thrillers — The Gone-Away World, Gnomon and Titanium Noir — before turning to the family business. He writes in a small back office at his north London house, seated in his father's chair, which he describes as very uncomfortable.