The Mission Song Signed by John le Carré First Edition Hodder & Stoughton 2006. A fine copy that appears unread. No previous owner's marks or inscriptions and no foxing to contents or edges. Covers completely unblemished. In a fine dust jacket with no creasing, tears or loss. Not price clipped.

Bruno "Salvo" Salvador, a polyglot interpreter of mixed Congolese-English heritage, is conscripted by shadowy British handlers for a clandestine summit in a fog-shrouded English stately home, where Congolese warlords and Western mining tycoons broker a fraudulent coup to seize Kivu's coltan riches. Fluent in four African tongues, Salvo transcribes the haggling—rife with bribes, betrayals, and genocidal threats—only to flee with damning tapes, pursued through London's multicultural underbelly and rain-lashed Brussels by assassins and his own fractured loyalties. Le Carré's narrative crackles with linguistic virtuosity and postcolonial rage, evoking a tone of urgent moral frenzy amid the detritus of empire's lingering greed.

This incisive le Carré thriller captivates readers with its polyphonic dive into Africa's exploited heart, akin to V.S. Naipaul's neocolonial dissections or Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness revivals, luring those gripped by identity's crosscurrents in global intrigue. Collectors value it as a late testament to the author's anti-imperial fire, its cultural jolt in exposing resource wars' human calculus making it a sharp counterpoint to sanitized spy fare. Targeting worldly adults—linguists, activists, and diaspora voices—it bridges genre stalwarts with postcolonial scholars, urging reflections on complicity's quiet corrosions in an interconnected age.