Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway is a British novelist and the son of John le Carré, best known before his father's death for his own acclaimed fiction, including the debut The Gone-Away World and the near-future thriller Gnomon, written under his pen name (his birth name is Nicholas Cornwell) to establish a career distinct from his father's towering reputation in the spy-fiction genre. Following John le Carré's death in December 2020, Harkaway took on stewardship of his father's literary legacy alongside his own continuing career. In 2024, Harkaway published Karla's Choice, a new George Smiley novel set between The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, marking the first authorized extension of le Carré's fiction after his death and the first time the Smiley character had been written by anyone other than le Carré himself. Undertaking the novel meant working within his father's meticulous, morally compromised, deeply researched vision of Cold War espionage, a register distinct from Harkaway's own more genre-blending, often science-fiction-inflected solo work. The project was widely covered as a rare instance of a literary heir taking up not just an estate's management but the actual authorial voice of a beloved, still widely read series.