The Bookseller.com

1st December 2008

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Le Carre gets trailer treatment

26.08.08 Benedicte Page

A nine minute trailer has been filmed by The Constant Gardener producer Simon Channing-Williams to promote John le Carre’s latest novel.

Le Carre’s publisher Hodder & Stoughton commissioned the "mini documentary" for the book, A Most Wanted Man, which is published on the 23rd September.

The trailer includes footage of the author discussing the novel and is showing exclusively on the Daily Telegraph website at www.telegraph.co.uk/lecarre until publication date. Thereafter it will also be used by all online retailers and posted on YouTube.

Hodder & Stoughton said that producing this trailer was the first time the publisher had worked with a big film producer, and that as le Carre very rarely does publicity, it offers a "rare, worldwide opportunity for his fans to hear him talk about the book". The film will be used globally by le Carre’s foreign publishers, including Simon & Schuster US and Ullstein in Germany.

A Most Wanted Man is an espionage novel set amid the War on Terror, telling the story of a young Russian Muslim smuggled into Hamburg and an idealistic German woman lawyer determined to save him from deportation. The publisher said its creative strategy in the trailer, which was filmed in Hamburg, was "to capture the sense of surveillance and displacement" which runs through
the book.

Le Carre is also doing an event to promote the book at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on 1st October.

Benedicte Page Hodder Le Carre