Our Kind of Traitor
by John le Carré
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In the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and with Britain on the brink of economic ruin, a young English couple takes a tennis vacation in Antigua. There they meet Dima, a Russian who styles himself the world's number one money launderer, who wants, among other things, a game of tennis. Back in London, the couple is subjected to an all-night interrogation by the British Secret Service, which also needs their help. Their acquiescence will lead them on a precarious journey through Paris show more to a safe house in Switzerland, helpless pawns in a game of nations that reveals the unholy alliances between the Russian mafia, the City of London, the government and the competing factions of the British Secret Service. show lessTags
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Perry Makepiece and his girlfriend Gail are upper-middle class nearly-thirty-somethings who spend a small inheritance on a once in a lifetime tennis holiday in Antigua. There, in (very) lengthy detail, they meet Dima, a Russian criminal with an extended family who challenges Perry to a tennis match as a cover for inveigling the pair in his plan to defect rather than be assassinated as he soon expects to be. Upon their return to England Perry, trying to shield Gail and her legal career from as much involvement as possible, informs the relevant spooks. So enter Tom, Dick and Harry (the code names the three spies use for a portion of the novel, I’m struggling to remember their real names or why they felt the need for this absurd show more subterfuge) after which everyone spends some time in a basement and then there's some more tennis.
That synopsis, interspersed with snippets of Dima’s personal history as a member of the Russian criminal brotherhood, takes about 50% of the audio book to unfold which might give you an idea of the pace of this so-called thriller that slumbers along in second gear for its entirety. If I included the bizarre and disconnected sub plot about Dima's daughter's pregnancy to a climbing instructor but left out all the tedious tennis, spy-craft exposition and wallowing in indecision by the spooks, the remainder of the plot could easily be summarised in a single paragraph and then you could all save yourselves the bother of reading it at all. Even the extraordinarily abrupt ending is dull, as if the author was as tired with the whole thing as I was by then.
Le Carré assures us that the money laundering and its links to the UK financial crisis at the heart of this novel is very real and I have no reason to doubt him But it doesn't matter how real the basis for the novel is if the author can't make me believe it and I didn't believe the premise for this novel for a single second. Nothing about the character of Dima, his choice of defection route or the use by the British secret services of a couple of randomly chosen amateurs for work like that felt remotely credible. Even if such things go on every day in the real world, le Carré didn't manage to make me believe it in his made up one. The 'instruction' of Perry and Gail seemed much closer to the spy games I played when I was eight (I got a spy kit for my birthday that year which included invisible ink and machines which my best friend and I used to send and receive coded messages that our respective brothers couldn't read) than to any real life espionage. I would have been unsurprised to see the cone of silence?
The characters are the final let down of this 11 hour and 23 minute disappointment. In the past le Carré has been a master at creating intriguing people who leap of the page and demand to be investigated, absorbed and understood. Here the characters are all flat and kept at arm's length with emotions that seemed the same whether they were facing imminent death, the break-up of a marriage or the fact their cup of tea had grown cold. Tom, the oldest of the MI6 agents, is a poor imitation of le Carré's best-known, bureaucracy mastering creation George Smiley and Dima is a caricature of the evil Russian stereotypes of B grade movies. The rest of the characters have already faded from my mind.
Listening to this book was like one, long yawn. Aside from an excellent narration and the fact that le Carré can still put words together in a way that is pleasing to a lover of the English language there is really nothing to recommend the thing at all. However, elsewhere on the ‘net reviews of the novel are split fairly evenly. If you do decided to read it I hope for your sake you're in the half of the population that has an entirely different reading experience to the one I had. But just in I suggest you take a pillow. show less
That synopsis, interspersed with snippets of Dima’s personal history as a member of the Russian criminal brotherhood, takes about 50% of the audio book to unfold which might give you an idea of the pace of this so-called thriller that slumbers along in second gear for its entirety. If I included the bizarre and disconnected sub plot about Dima's daughter's pregnancy to a climbing instructor but left out all the tedious tennis, spy-craft exposition and wallowing in indecision by the spooks, the remainder of the plot could easily be summarised in a single paragraph and then you could all save yourselves the bother of reading it at all. Even the extraordinarily abrupt ending is dull, as if the author was as tired with the whole thing as I was by then.
Le Carré assures us that the money laundering and its links to the UK financial crisis at the heart of this novel is very real and I have no reason to doubt him But it doesn't matter how real the basis for the novel is if the author can't make me believe it and I didn't believe the premise for this novel for a single second. Nothing about the character of Dima, his choice of defection route or the use by the British secret services of a couple of randomly chosen amateurs for work like that felt remotely credible. Even if such things go on every day in the real world, le Carré didn't manage to make me believe it in his made up one. The 'instruction' of Perry and Gail seemed much closer to the spy games I played when I was eight (I got a spy kit for my birthday that year which included invisible ink and machines which my best friend and I used to send and receive coded messages that our respective brothers couldn't read) than to any real life espionage. I would have been unsurprised to see the cone of silence?
The characters are the final let down of this 11 hour and 23 minute disappointment. In the past le Carré has been a master at creating intriguing people who leap of the page and demand to be investigated, absorbed and understood. Here the characters are all flat and kept at arm's length with emotions that seemed the same whether they were facing imminent death, the break-up of a marriage or the fact their cup of tea had grown cold. Tom, the oldest of the MI6 agents, is a poor imitation of le Carré's best-known, bureaucracy mastering creation George Smiley and Dima is a caricature of the evil Russian stereotypes of B grade movies. The rest of the characters have already faded from my mind.
Listening to this book was like one, long yawn. Aside from an excellent narration and the fact that le Carré can still put words together in a way that is pleasing to a lover of the English language there is really nothing to recommend the thing at all. However, elsewhere on the ‘net reviews of the novel are split fairly evenly. If you do decided to read it I hope for your sake you're in the half of the population that has an entirely different reading experience to the one I had. But just in I suggest you take a pillow. show less
In this novel, Le Carre continues to plumb the depths of modern global capitalism to forge a compelling if profoundly pessimistic view of the world. You follow the unfolding operation (the worlds leading money launderer has agreed to testify against the Russian mafia and must be escorted to safety through a maze of intrigue and deception) with growing dread as corrupt political forces beyond the control of the novel's heroes conspire against them. While the book is tautly suspenseful, I don't think it is a spoiler to warn that there is no happy ending. That seems to have become inevitable in Le Carre's work. His perspective on why the world is tragic is what makes him worth reading.
At last John le Carre seems to be getting back on form. His previous three books were not up to the standard of his glory days writing about the Cold War, and although Our Kind of Traitor does not reach thstandards of the Smiley/Karla books, he seems to have found a new area of spying that is up-to-date and up his street. This book kept me hooked and he really started developing some interesting characters, of whom I'm sure we'll learn more in subsequent books. The cynical commercialisation of government and its departments was all too believable. The ending left enough ambiguity to make me want a follow-up.
John le Carré, ein Name der für spannende Agenten- und Spionagethriller steht - mit dieser Erwartungshaltung machte ich mich an sein neuestes Werk. Ich las und las, amüsierte mich prächtig und ertappte mich dennoch dabei, immer oberflächlicher über den Text hinwegzugehen, bis ich bei Seite 202 (ca. der Hälfte) das Buch resigniert zuschlug. Denn von Spannung - keine Spur. Welch eine Enttäuschung!
Doch ich hatte mich selbst in die Irre geführt, denn bei genauem Hinschauen ist (außer bei der Einordung bei diversen Buchläden) nirgendwo die Rede von Krimi oder Thriller. 'Verräter wie wir' ist eine Lektüre, die zwar im Agentenmilieu spielt und gegen Ende einen eindrucksvollen Spannungsbogen aufweist, aber dennoch nicht mehr oder show more weniger als ein Roman. Also schickte ich meine Erwartungen in die Wüste und begann nochmal von vorn. Und siehe da....
Perry und Gail, ein wohl recht typisch britisches, linksliberales Pärchen mit einer eher skeptischen Haltung gegenüber den staatlichen Institutionen, lernen in einem Urlaub einen russischen Oligarchen kennen, der sie unversehens zu seinen Vertrauten kürt. Plötzlich finden die Beiden sich wieder in der Rolle als Mittler zwischen dem britischen Geheimdienst und einem potentiellen russischen Überläufer.
LeCarré verwendet viele Seiten auf die genaue Darstellung der einzelnen Personen, inbesondere auf die seiner beiden Protagonisten Gail und Perry. Es gelingt ihm bravourös, nicht nur sehr detailliert sondern auch voller Witz die Eigenheiten und Widersprüchlichkeiten der Handelnden darzustellen. Wie Perry beispielsweise, der ewige Kritiker und Verächter der britischen Politik, der sich plötzlich als inoffizieller Geheimdienstmitarbeiter wiederfindet - und es wider Erwarten geniesst. Oder Dima, der russische Oligarch, der England liebt und bewundert und alle britischen Literaturklassiker besitzt, ohne vermutlich einen einzigen davon gelesen zu haben. Dies alles ist zudem in einer wunderbaren Sprache verfasst, über die man sich auf jeder Seite auf's Neue freut.
Weshalb dann trotzdem nicht die volle Punktzahl? Weil bis zur ca. der Hälfte des Buches die Menge der Perspektivenwechsel etwas überhand nimmt. In einem Gespräch mit dem Geheimdienst, das bis dorthin die Rahmenhandlung darstellt, berichten Gail und Perry über ihre Begegnung mit Dima. Hierbei werden Rück- und Einblicke auf und in die Lebensläufe der Beteiligten eingeschoben, wobei der Großteil dieser einzelnen Abschnitte meist nicht mehr als 4-6 Seiten umfasst, sodass zumindest der Beginn etwas unübersichtlich wirkt .
Aber abgesehen von dieser kleinen Mäkelei: grandiose Unterhaltung mit (wahrscheinlich) durchaus realistischen Einblicken in das schmutzige Geldwäschergeschäft. show less
Doch ich hatte mich selbst in die Irre geführt, denn bei genauem Hinschauen ist (außer bei der Einordung bei diversen Buchläden) nirgendwo die Rede von Krimi oder Thriller. 'Verräter wie wir' ist eine Lektüre, die zwar im Agentenmilieu spielt und gegen Ende einen eindrucksvollen Spannungsbogen aufweist, aber dennoch nicht mehr oder show more weniger als ein Roman. Also schickte ich meine Erwartungen in die Wüste und begann nochmal von vorn. Und siehe da....
Perry und Gail, ein wohl recht typisch britisches, linksliberales Pärchen mit einer eher skeptischen Haltung gegenüber den staatlichen Institutionen, lernen in einem Urlaub einen russischen Oligarchen kennen, der sie unversehens zu seinen Vertrauten kürt. Plötzlich finden die Beiden sich wieder in der Rolle als Mittler zwischen dem britischen Geheimdienst und einem potentiellen russischen Überläufer.
LeCarré verwendet viele Seiten auf die genaue Darstellung der einzelnen Personen, inbesondere auf die seiner beiden Protagonisten Gail und Perry. Es gelingt ihm bravourös, nicht nur sehr detailliert sondern auch voller Witz die Eigenheiten und Widersprüchlichkeiten der Handelnden darzustellen. Wie Perry beispielsweise, der ewige Kritiker und Verächter der britischen Politik, der sich plötzlich als inoffizieller Geheimdienstmitarbeiter wiederfindet - und es wider Erwarten geniesst. Oder Dima, der russische Oligarch, der England liebt und bewundert und alle britischen Literaturklassiker besitzt, ohne vermutlich einen einzigen davon gelesen zu haben. Dies alles ist zudem in einer wunderbaren Sprache verfasst, über die man sich auf jeder Seite auf's Neue freut.
Weshalb dann trotzdem nicht die volle Punktzahl? Weil bis zur ca. der Hälfte des Buches die Menge der Perspektivenwechsel etwas überhand nimmt. In einem Gespräch mit dem Geheimdienst, das bis dorthin die Rahmenhandlung darstellt, berichten Gail und Perry über ihre Begegnung mit Dima. Hierbei werden Rück- und Einblicke auf und in die Lebensläufe der Beteiligten eingeschoben, wobei der Großteil dieser einzelnen Abschnitte meist nicht mehr als 4-6 Seiten umfasst, sodass zumindest der Beginn etwas unübersichtlich wirkt .
Aber abgesehen von dieser kleinen Mäkelei: grandiose Unterhaltung mit (wahrscheinlich) durchaus realistischen Einblicken in das schmutzige Geldwäschergeschäft. show less
(original review, 2010)
About a third of the way through “Our Kind of Traitor”, I sat back and reflected on the elegance of the prose and the grace and ease with which the narrative moved back and forth through time, and two words came inescapably to mind: Joseph Conrad. I can't believe, after all the le Carré novels I had already read at that point, that this was the first time the comparison ever occurred to me, but there it is.
In a way, though, it's fitting that the realization came with that book: "Our Kind of Traitor" is an elegant novel, certainly an accomplished bit of storytelling, but I don't think anyone will ever rank it alongside “Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy” or “The Constant Gardener”. Yet I savored the book for show more the skill and grace with which it was written. This is what distinguishes Le Carré from somebody like Michael Crichton: he can be read with pleasure simply for the quality of his writing. Crichton is a wonderfully efficient storyteller, and as long as he's got a good tale to tell, he can be great fun to read. What he does is not easy, and at his best he does it very, very well. But I could never imagine sitting back, after reading a page of any one of his books, and simply savoring the language for its own sake. With John le Carré I find myself doing this all the time -- as I do with Raymond Chandler, another truly great writer who happened to work in "genre fiction".
Conrad was probably the originator of the literary thriller in which a compromised, emotionally tormented male protagonist, an anti-hero no less in the true sense, is placed centre-stage, in a morally ambiguous setting with all sorts of dark shades. And that is very much Le Carre’s model too.
It’s so very sharp and proficient (as, of course, is the plotting and structure). Some Le Carré detractors grumble about clichés and typical thriller language, but as far as I’m concerned (and I am, admittedly, a very big fan) they are only demonstrating their own philistinism in doing so. He does use the kind of colloquialisms and set phrases that you could dismiss as clichés elsewhere, but half of them he’s invented himself, and the other half he is using knowingly, with perfect confidence. There is nothing wrong with clichés if the writer is good enough to shepherd them around the page exactly as he wants, to be their master. They are only a problem if the writer isn’t good enough, and they come blundering in unbidden and out of control, often in the midst of pretentiously considered sentences. Le Carré, obviously, is plenty good enough. The pacing, the tone: it's all just brilliant, and as a literary device, the way the protagonist retreats deeper into his own repressed psychology as his own physical horizons are narrowed down and down is ever so clever. Love it; absolutely love it.
I think le Carré is seen as transcending the genre because he creates a world which is very believable even though I am sure that the Circus bears no resemblance to Britain's SIS. For a certain type of high minded reader who frets about such things, books that feature stuff that manifestly don't exist (dragons, amateur detectives, starships) are bothersome. They smell of flippancy and a departure from seriousness and worthiness which is not really acceptable to a reader who views reading as a stern and proper undertaking like a Calvinist at prayer. And I love SF...
SF = Speculative Fiction. show less
About a third of the way through “Our Kind of Traitor”, I sat back and reflected on the elegance of the prose and the grace and ease with which the narrative moved back and forth through time, and two words came inescapably to mind: Joseph Conrad. I can't believe, after all the le Carré novels I had already read at that point, that this was the first time the comparison ever occurred to me, but there it is.
In a way, though, it's fitting that the realization came with that book: "Our Kind of Traitor" is an elegant novel, certainly an accomplished bit of storytelling, but I don't think anyone will ever rank it alongside “Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy” or “The Constant Gardener”. Yet I savored the book for show more the skill and grace with which it was written. This is what distinguishes Le Carré from somebody like Michael Crichton: he can be read with pleasure simply for the quality of his writing. Crichton is a wonderfully efficient storyteller, and as long as he's got a good tale to tell, he can be great fun to read. What he does is not easy, and at his best he does it very, very well. But I could never imagine sitting back, after reading a page of any one of his books, and simply savoring the language for its own sake. With John le Carré I find myself doing this all the time -- as I do with Raymond Chandler, another truly great writer who happened to work in "genre fiction".
Conrad was probably the originator of the literary thriller in which a compromised, emotionally tormented male protagonist, an anti-hero no less in the true sense, is placed centre-stage, in a morally ambiguous setting with all sorts of dark shades. And that is very much Le Carre’s model too.
It’s so very sharp and proficient (as, of course, is the plotting and structure). Some Le Carré detractors grumble about clichés and typical thriller language, but as far as I’m concerned (and I am, admittedly, a very big fan) they are only demonstrating their own philistinism in doing so. He does use the kind of colloquialisms and set phrases that you could dismiss as clichés elsewhere, but half of them he’s invented himself, and the other half he is using knowingly, with perfect confidence. There is nothing wrong with clichés if the writer is good enough to shepherd them around the page exactly as he wants, to be their master. They are only a problem if the writer isn’t good enough, and they come blundering in unbidden and out of control, often in the midst of pretentiously considered sentences. Le Carré, obviously, is plenty good enough. The pacing, the tone: it's all just brilliant, and as a literary device, the way the protagonist retreats deeper into his own repressed psychology as his own physical horizons are narrowed down and down is ever so clever. Love it; absolutely love it.
I think le Carré is seen as transcending the genre because he creates a world which is very believable even though I am sure that the Circus bears no resemblance to Britain's SIS. For a certain type of high minded reader who frets about such things, books that feature stuff that manifestly don't exist (dragons, amateur detectives, starships) are bothersome. They smell of flippancy and a departure from seriousness and worthiness which is not really acceptable to a reader who views reading as a stern and proper undertaking like a Calvinist at prayer. And I love SF...
SF = Speculative Fiction. show less
University lecturer Perry Makepiece and his girlfriend Gail Perkins, a lawyer, are on a tennis vacation in Antigua where they meet Dmitri (Dima) Vladimirovich Krasnov, a self-confessed money launderer. Dima wants to get out of the control of the Russian mob and believes Perry and Gail can help by passing information to MI6 in exchange for protection. John le Carré's writing is elegant and sophisticated, and captures the reader's attention from the first page although I could have done with less dialogue from the brash Dima. It's a captivating story as expected, but I will always miss George Smiley.
First, this is a difficult review for me to write. I admire le Carre immensely as a novelist and have led many others to discover what a truly good novel and, incidentally, a spy novel can be. le Carre has a distinguished lineage: Dickens, Conrad, Greene. But he is not just a conglomeration of these titans nor a shadow of them. He is le Carre, one of the few and great moral novelists writing, moral in the best Conradian sense. (Those who feel compelled to reread any Conrad novel a second time will immediately get what I intend. Oh, a reread of 'Tinker, Tailor' counts too.)
One facet of le Carre's writing that can be both entertaining and devastating are bursts of Dickensian-like absurdism/exaggeration used to flay things needing to be show more flayed like corrupt, incompetent or uncaring bureaucracies / bureaucrats or stupid /dangerous Americans. The narrative perspective in these moments is both playful and wicked; it is also distant. At times it is so removed from THE ACTION it becomes almost a shorthand. This technique (without the absurdism and performed in a variety of ways) is often used by le Carre to develop character. It works best in short spurts. One can begin to get a feel for what I have in mind in a half-dialog like this:
"You see my Natasha?"
Perry has seen his Natasha.
"She beautiful?"
Perry has no difficulty in assuring Dima that Natasha is indeed very beautiful.
Unfortunately, in this novel, le Carre leans on this heavily and he is not able to close the narrative distance he opens between us and the characters down the home stretch. The result is that in the end, THIS reader just did not care all that much about any of participants in the drama. They all feel too much like cutouts, like outlines of characters that might have been, like caricatures of themselves.
This is rare. le Carre, if he cares about anything, cares about characters and especially cares about his main characters, the ones who in his later novels do all of the sacrificing or are sacrificed.
While the fate of many of le Carre's characters weighs heavily on me long after I finish his novels, in this case not a bit. Is the problem here that le Carre has a point to make, a single target he is determined to hit doing maximum damage? The novel almost feels like the pull of a good trigger (long first stage and crisp, breaking second). So maybe he hits his target, but perfect shots are not always the most interesting ones. My own response at novel's end was "Ok. I get it." I expect, even enjoy this at the end of an O'Henry short story, but it is probably not a good one to have at the end of 'Our Kind of Traitor.' show less
One facet of le Carre's writing that can be both entertaining and devastating are bursts of Dickensian-like absurdism/exaggeration used to flay things needing to be show more flayed like corrupt, incompetent or uncaring bureaucracies / bureaucrats or stupid /dangerous Americans. The narrative perspective in these moments is both playful and wicked; it is also distant. At times it is so removed from THE ACTION it becomes almost a shorthand. This technique (without the absurdism and performed in a variety of ways) is often used by le Carre to develop character. It works best in short spurts. One can begin to get a feel for what I have in mind in a half-dialog like this:
"You see my Natasha?"
Perry has seen his Natasha.
"She beautiful?"
Perry has no difficulty in assuring Dima that Natasha is indeed very beautiful.
Unfortunately, in this novel, le Carre leans on this heavily and he is not able to close the narrative distance he opens between us and the characters down the home stretch. The result is that in the end, THIS reader just did not care all that much about any of participants in the drama. They all feel too much like cutouts, like outlines of characters that might have been, like caricatures of themselves.
This is rare. le Carre, if he cares about anything, cares about characters and especially cares about his main characters, the ones who in his later novels do all of the sacrificing or are sacrificed.
While the fate of many of le Carre's characters weighs heavily on me long after I finish his novels, in this case not a bit. Is the problem here that le Carre has a point to make, a single target he is determined to hit doing maximum damage? The novel almost feels like the pull of a good trigger (long first stage and crisp, breaking second). So maybe he hits his target, but perfect shots are not always the most interesting ones. My own response at novel's end was "Ok. I get it." I expect, even enjoy this at the end of an O'Henry short story, but it is probably not a good one to have at the end of 'Our Kind of Traitor.' show less
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ThingScore 85
Le Carré describes a shifting world where mobsters can be of use to the government, where the Secret Service doesn't care whom it sacrifices—British citizens or parts of itself—to reel in their quarry, and where the rule of law, or even what is considered to be legal, won't always apply.
added by lophuels
added by lophuels
Our Kind of Traitor is on an uplifting and pleasingly-familiar course, though it is one that confirms the depths of the author’s discomfort and anger at the world.
added by lophuels
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David John Moore Cornwell was born in Poole, Dorsetshire, England in 1931. He attended Bern University in Switzerland from 1948-49 and later completed a B.A. at Lincoln College, Oxford. He taught at Eton from 1956-58 and was a member of the British Foreign Service from 1959 to 1964. He writes espionage thrillers under the pseudonym John le Carré. show more The pseudonym was necessary when he began writing, in the early 1960s because, at that time, he held a diplomatic position with the British Foreign Office and was not allowed to publish under his own name. When his third book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became a worldwide bestseller in 1964, he left the foreign service to write full time. His other works include Call for the Dead; A Murder of Quality; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1986 and the Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association in 1988. In 2011 he accepted the Goethe Medal. And in 2020, he accepted the Olof Palme Prize. Ten of his books have been adapted for television and motion pictures including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Russia House, The Constant Gardener, A Most Wanted Man, and Our Kind of Traitor. Le Carré's memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from my Life, became a New York Times bestseller in 2016. In 2019, he published a spy thriller, Agent Running in the Field. John Le Carré died on December 12, 2020 from pneumonia at the age of 89. (Bowker Author Biography) John le Carre was born in 1931. After attending the univesities of Berne and Oxford, he spent five years in the British Foreign Service. He's the author of eighteen novels, translated into twenty-five languages. He lives in England. (Publisher Provided) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Our Kind of Traitor
- Original title
- Our Kind of Traitor
- Original publication date
- 2010
- Important places*
- Antigua; Londen, Engeland, Verenigd Koninkrijk; Parijs, Île-de-France, Frankrijk; Bern, Bern, Zwitserland
- Related movies
- Our Kind of Traitor (2016 | IMDb)
- Epigraph
- Princes in this case
Do hate the traitor, though they love the treason.
Samuel Daniel - Dedication
- In memory of
Simon Channing Williams
film-maker, magician,
honorourable man. - First words
- At seven o'clock of a Caribbean morning, on the island of Antigua, one Peregrine Makepiece, otherwise known as Perry, an all-round amateur athlete of distinction and until recently tutor in English literature at a distinguish... (show all)ed Oxford college, played three sets of tennis against a muscular, stiff-backed, bald, brown-eyed Russian man of dignified bearing in his middle fifties called Dima.
- Quotations
- Federer is a bit perplexed about what to say - they clearly haven't met before - but he preserves his on-court nice manners, although he looks a tad irritated in a grouchy, Swiss sort of way that reminds us that his celebrate... (show all)d armour has its chinks.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)No group has claimed responsibility.
- Original language*
- Engels
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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