Giving up his high-powered career to run a bookshop in a small English seaside town, Julian Lawndsley finds his life upended by Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, who is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise. "In Silverview, John le Carre turns his focus to the world that occupied his writing for the past sixty years-the secret world itself. Julian Lawndsley has renounced...

In 1943 a group of 1434 Polish refugees from the Soviet Russia, including a few hundred orphans, arrived in an abandoned ranch of Santa Rosa at the invitation of the Mexican President. Santa Rosa, near Leon, Mexico became their home for the few years to come. Earlier in December 1942, Prime Minister of Polish Government in Exile - General Władysław Sikorski arrived in Mexico to sign an agreement with President of Mexico Avila Camacho to set up such...

Peter, an orphan in Warsaw, is adopted by German professor Kaltenbach and his wife who believe the boy to be a fine specimen of Hitler Youth, but Peter begins to develop his own ideas in opposition to the Nazis, which is not a popular position in Berlin in 1943.

-- Suite Francaise "Housekeeper or housewife?" the soldier asks Silvana as she and eight- year-old Aurek board the ship that will take them from Poland to England at the end of World War II. There her husband, Janusz, is already waiting for them at the little house at 22 Britannia Road. But the war has changed them all so utterly that they'll barely recognize one another when they are reunited. "Survivor," she answers. Silvana and Aurek spent the...