Characters
- Maria Andreyevna Ostrakova - a Russian émigrée in Paris, mother of a girl, Alexandra Glikman, whom she left with the girl's father when she escaped from the Soviet Union
- Oleg Kirov né Oleg Kursky - an agent for Karla, deputed to find a suitable legend for Karla's daughter
- General Vladimir - Estonian émigré, former Soviet general, spied for the British for three years, since defected and later retired
- Otto Leipzig - "The Magician", freelance intelligence agent and occasional fraud, who works with Vladimir to take down Kirov and Karla
- George Smiley - retired, former Acting Chief of British intelligence MI6 (nickname Circus)
- Peter Guillam - Head of the British Intelligence section in the Paris embassy
- Connie Sachs - retired former analyst and head of Moscow sphere of British intelligence
- Sir Oliver Lacon - Whitehall's Head Prefect to the intelligence service, aka Cabinet Office factotum
- Nigel Mostyn - young intelligence officer who took Vladimir's calls to Circus
- Alexandra Borisovna Ostrakova - Maria Andreyevna's daughter; identity assumed by Karla's daughter
- Karla - Chief of the Thirteenth Directorate within Soviet Intelligence. The Directorate is also known as the Karla Directorate.
- Sir Saul Enderby - Chief of British intelligence MI6
- William (Villem) Craven - son of a deceased friend of Vladimir, performs a courier job for Vladimir
- Mikhel - Vladimir's émigré friend at the Free Baltic library in Bloomsbury
- Elvira - Mikhel's wife, probably Vladimir's lover
- Toby Esterhase - former Circus man, now an antiques dealer, organizes the trapping of Grigoriev
- Claus Kretzschmar - Otto Leipzig's old associate, owner of a seedy night club in Hamburg where Kirov is burned
- Grigoriev - Soviet bureaucrat in Bern who is drawn against his will into, first, Karla's services, then Smiley's
- Krassky - Moscow courier who handles correspondence between Grigoriev and Karla
- Tatiana - Karla's deranged daughter, usually referred to by her assumed identity, "Alexandra"
- Mother Felicity - mother superior of the facility in Thun where Alexandra/Tatiana is kept
Read more about this topic: Smiley's People
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“I make it a kind of pious rule to go to every funeral to which I am invited, both as I wish to pay a proper respect to the dead, unless their characters have been bad, and as I would wish to have the funeral of my own near relations or of myself well attended.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)