Absolute Friends
By John le Carré
 
First edition, first impression: London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003.
 
Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in black, purple endpapers and paste-downs. With the original dust jacket, printed in purple with white and red lettering; publisher's price of £18.99 to the lower corner of the front flap.
 
A fine copy. The binding square and tight, the boards fresh and unfaded, corners sharp. A couple of small spots to the fore-edge of the text block; the contents otherwise clean and bright throughout. Signed by the author in black ink on the title page.
 
The dust jacket fine, unclipped and unfaded, with no discernible creasing, tears, or rubbing; a particularly crisp and well-preserved example.
 
Absolute Friends is one of le Carré's most overtly political late novels, written in the aftermath of the Cold War and published at the height of the Iraq crisis. A meditation on loyalty, betrayal, and the moral disarray of the post-9/11 West, it stands as a key work of the author's later period.