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Illumination and Shadow

‘It is Europe that is dying, my friends.’ This gloomy observation is, his devoted fans will recognize, the very essence of Alan Furst. It is delivered, in this case, by an anti-fascist Italian exile to a group of his compatriots in Paris in 1938, in Furst’s most recent novel, The Foreign Correspondent. But the world he has brought to life in all nine of his books is old Europe – from Lisbon to the Black Sea, though usually centred in the French capital – as it is smashed and swept away by war and the unstoppable momentum of power politics.

In this remarkable collection of thrillers, which have appeared over the past nineteen years, each one intensifying the reviewer’s hunt for a word that is more intense, more sensuously persuasive than the mere ‘atmospheric’, Furst opens window after window on that tumultuous time, letting in equal amounts of illumination and shadow. (There’s a clue in the titles: Dark Star, Night Soldiers, The World at Night, Kingdom of Shadows, Dark Voyage . . .) And for anyone who thinks they have ‘done’ the Second World War through history lessons, history books or the History Channel, Furst is a revelation, not only because his novels involve the far-flung ‘ragged edges of Europe’ – the Carpathians, the wilder reaches of the Danube . . . maps are sometimes helpfully provided – but because of the moral ambiguities at play among the characters, who get caught up in the intrigues that shape, or attempt to shape, events.

Furst, an American, was for many years a journalist – based in Paris – and his historical research is impeccable; not just the political detail, but what his characters eat, drink, smoke, wear; the life of the streets they walk down, the seedy hotels, grand salons and louche cafés they frequent; night-time in a busy port, border crossings by train. Getting the details right would make Furst just a good social historian – whereas he is a romancer, a romancier one might say.

The reader still manages to learn an awf

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‘It is Europe that is dying, my friends.’ This gloomy observation is, his devoted fans will recognize, the very essence of Alan Furst. It is delivered, in this case, by an anti-fascist Italian exile to a group of his compatriots in Paris in 1938, in Furst’s most recent novel, The Foreign Correspondent. But the world he has brought to life in all nine of his books is old Europe – from Lisbon to the Black Sea, though usually centred in the French capital – as it is smashed and swept away by war and the unstoppable momentum of power politics.

In this remarkable collection of thrillers, which have appeared over the past nineteen years, each one intensifying the reviewer’s hunt for a word that is more intense, more sensuously persuasive than the mere ‘atmospheric’, Furst opens window after window on that tumultuous time, letting in equal amounts of illumination and shadow. (There’s a clue in the titles: Dark Star, Night Soldiers, The World at Night, Kingdom of Shadows, Dark Voyage . . .) And for anyone who thinks they have ‘done’ the Second World War through history lessons, history books or the History Channel, Furst is a revelation, not only because his novels involve the far-flung ‘ragged edges of Europe’ – the Carpathians, the wilder reaches of the Danube . . . maps are sometimes helpfully provided – but because of the moral ambiguities at play among the characters, who get caught up in the intrigues that shape, or attempt to shape, events. Furst, an American, was for many years a journalist – based in Paris – and his historical research is impeccable; not just the political detail, but what his characters eat, drink, smoke, wear; the life of the streets they walk down, the seedy hotels, grand salons and louche cafés they frequent; night-time in a busy port, border crossings by train. Getting the details right would make Furst just a good social historian – whereas he is a romancer, a romancier one might say. The reader still manages to learn an awful lot about the realpolitik of the times. In The Foreign Correspondent, the action opens with the murder of an Italian émigré in Paris, editor of a clandestine antifascist newspaper – while he is in bed with his mistress, the wife of a French cabinet minister. But this is no crime of passion: the killers are Italian fascists, dedicated to stamping out the paper, which is smuggled into Italy and distributed by a loosely organized network of sympathizers. That they’re all liberals, not communists, is a theme that crops up in many books: even as those who oppose Nazism and Fascism strive to muster their meagre forces, there is an innate suspicion of communist-led resistance. The murder sends a message – and creates a vacancy. Carlo Weisz, an Italian working in Paris for Reuters, returns from covering the civil war in Spain to take up the editorship and attracts the attention of the British secret service, who have plans for him of their own. But the fascist agents haven’t finished with the newspaper’s editorial board – émigrés all, destined by fate and totalitarian politics to lives very different from those they had dreamed of: the research chemist who now sells stockings at Galeries Lafayette, the businessman reduced to working in a warehouse. And to complete the pan-European picture, Weisz is reunited with an old girlfriend when he is sent to Berlin to cover the ‘pact of steel’ between Hitler and Mussolini. Furst’s heroes are drawn into the clandestine world of espionage and counter-espionage not because they want to be but because they have no choice, morally or pragmatically. They become involved in missions of great danger, taking them and the reader into fascinating pockets of war-torn Europe, pitting their wits against, inter alia, the Comintern, wild mountain partisans and a selection of exotic secret services – the tension is as good as anything in the canon of spy thrillers, though Furst’s reluctant agents come from a different template. Typical is Jean Casson, in The World at Night (though the fourth of the novels, it is the one I would recommend to new readers for an immediate seduction by Furst’s sweet melancholy cynicism). He is the quintessential Parisian bon viveur: intelligent, worldly, indulgent, of himself and others (he is not particularly disapproving when an old girlfriend takes up with a German officer). Yet, like all Furst’s heroes, he has his role to play on the side of civilization against barbarity, of good against evil. Dirty tricks suck Casson into the murky manoeuvres of various intelligence services, and the reader struggles with him to make sense of it all. He becomes embroiled in dangerous games, ‘webs and coils and plots and lies that sounded like truths’ as Furst puts it, all heavily loaded towards failure and betrayal. There is the constant tension of uncertainty and distrust – can he ever be sure he is playing the right game, for the right side? But it is also clear that in the circumstances there is no option but to pitch in on the side that – he hopes – is playing for justice and freedom. His civilized world has become a battlefield – and he’s a lover, not a fighter. It is this full-bodied sensuality that makes Furst’s the kind of ‘war’ books that men can happily identify with and women adore. Casson, like Carlo Weisz of The Foreign Correspondent, loves women. They enjoy sexy affairs for the uncomplicated giving and receiving of pleasure, but will take the greatest risks for the women they truly love. Even in the enfolding horrors of war, the heart rules.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 15 © Karen Robinson 2007


About the contributor

Karen Robinson is supplements editor of the Sunday Times, where she has also been the paper’s audio books reviewer for more than a decade.

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