Washington native David Ignatius is a graduate of St. Albans and Harvard University, and recipient of a diploma in economics from King’s College at Cambridge University. Before joining The Washington Post, he was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and an editor at Washington Monthly. He was also executive editor of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune from 2000 to 2003. Ignatius currently writes a twice-weekly column for the Post and, with Fareed Zakaria, hosts PostGlobal, an online discussion of world issues. He has written a number of novels, beginning with “Agents of Innocence” in 1987 and including the newly published “Body of Lies.” Married and the father of three daughters, Ignatius lives in the District.
There are 20 years between your first novel, “Agents of Innocence,” and the new book, “Body of Lies.” The ending of the new book seemed more hopeful, if only for the chief characters.
The two really should be seen as bookends. They’re really about the same subject: a CIA effort to penetrate a terrorist organization. The first book presents a CIA steadier and more confident. Just about everything in “Agents of Innocence” really happened; it’s one of the great success stories the agency has had in its history in the Middle East. I’m told that the book is used as a teaching aid at the Farm; it shows them off in their best light. By the time period that “Body of Lies” is describing, our adversary has become more diabolical, more determined, and our ability to get inside that adversary has diminished. I think the CIA [in it] is less self-confident and less competent.
I think the new book is saying something that the first novel didn’t fully understand, or accept, which is, “You Americans don’t know what you don’t know.” This is the Arabs’ terrain: They understand it, they control it. I do think this is something we need to reckon with.
What about the Yale-CIA connection?
In the first novel, people are always making cracks about Yale, but the CIA was Ivy League. … It was all ivy all the time. That’s really changed and needs to change more. One of America’s strengths … is its incredibly diverse society. I can’t think of anything that sticks out in the world more than an American Ivy Leaguer, and our intelligence officers need to just disappear into the landscape.
What do you think is the appeal of books about espionage and terrorism in times like ours?
I think we’re all asking, “What’s going on in that part of the world?”; “What are we caught in?”; and “How are we going to get out of this?” The nonfiction list is dominated by [such] books that deal with this area. I think it’s a ground for fiction, too. I like to read novels that are fun to read, that are entertaining, that have characters and plot. I don’t like novels that are didactic, that want to teach me, tell me something too aggressively. I hope [“Body of Lies”] is a novel that satisfies the requirements of the genre: that the characters are interesting, it’s surprising, it ends up doing a loop-de-loop in the final third of the book. But I hope that the fact that it helps you understand this part of the world better will add to the readership.
Who are your icons among writers of espionage?
I like spy novels that are about people. What interests me about intelligence is what interests me about journalism: the circumstances under which people will tell you things. I reread Graham Greene over and over again. “The Quiet American” is a nearly perfect novel about America in the Third World. I like LeCarre, his early novels better than the later ones. I think “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” is just about a perfect novel.
What do you know about the movie to be based on “Body of Lies”?
They’re moving along, hoping to start shooting late this summer. Two drafts of the screenplay have been written by William Monahan who wrote “The Departed.” It’s excellent.
How do you adjust your already heavy schedule to allow time to work on a novel?
I have a liability for an opinion columnist, which is that I’m not all that interested in opinions. So I actually have to go out and do reporting. This book took about a year. I would work four days a week on my column and three on the book. I got a little office where I could go hide, where there was no phone and nobody could bother me. I think with fiction you have to just disappear into the book and its characters.
Do you have a particular place you like to go in the District for inspiration when you are working on a book?
I live near the Cathedral. I went to St. Albans. It’s an area where I can walk around that’s just full of ghosts, which is nice for a writer.
Author talk
7 p.m. Wednesday
» Venue: Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
» Info: 202-364-1919
