> Skip to content
  • Published: 30 July 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241482872
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 80

Penguin Readers Level 6: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (ELT Graded Reader)

Abridged Edition




Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reading series, designed for teenagers and young adults learning English as a foreign language.

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language practise activities, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. The eBook edition does NOT include access to the audio edition and digital book.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, a Level 6 Reader, is B1+ in the CEFR framework. The longer text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing future continuous, reported questions, third conditional, was going to and ellipsis. A small number of illustrations support the text.

Alec Leamas, a British spy, is worn out and ready to stop working. But his boss wants him to do one final job: to spread false information about an important man in East Germany. Can Alec end his career and finally come in from the cold?

  • Published: 30 July 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241482872
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 80

About the author

John le Carré

John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020. His posthumous novel Silverview was published in 2021.

Also by John le Carré

See all
penguin pop image
penguin pop image