Sam Brigger

Did I just whistle a song that's going to betray my origins?

And you actually have a funny moment where a Soviet spy tells someone that he was trained at a facility that had a dozen different kinds of toilets because the one thing that would betray you the quickest would be if you didn't really understand how to use a bathroom that supposedly you'd lived with your entire life.

So first of all, was that something you came up with it or had you heard that?

Yeah, it makes sense.

If you don't know that the cold water is, say, switched in the sink, then that's going to give you up right away.

So, Nick, this could be considered a prequel to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, if you care to use that word.

And one of the things that a prequel can do is kind of explain the background to behavior in the original book.

And one of the things I really like about this book is that you –

you rehabilitate the character of Anne, George Smiley's wife.

In your father's books, Anne is almost always offstage, having very public and multiple affairs, being unfaithful to Smiley.

And in fact, in Tinker Taylor, she's sort of a pawn in a huge betrayal of Smiley.

And so when you read those books, like, it's hard not to think of Anne as a kind of villain.

But you turn that on your head in this book.

One of the things that I find so sad about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is that George spends the most amount of his time trying to figure out two people.

Like one is his nemesis Carla in the KGB, but the other is Anne, his wife, and they're both mysteries to him.

That's not a positive view of marriage, I guess I would say, too.

We'll talk about your dad's family life a little bit later.

But before we get to that, how did you approach the language of this book?

It seems to me that you're emulating your father's style of writing, which I think is quite different from your own instincts as a writer.

Like, your father tended to write...