Alan Furst's Spies in Old-World Europe

Ten Works From the Master of the Historical Espionage Novel

Mar 14, 2009 Fred Hasson

Alan Furst's stories about resistance in the face of Nazi oppression transcend the genre of espionage. He is, in fact, among the best historical novelists working today.

When Paris and the rest of Europe came under the heel of the Nazi jackboot in the late 1930s, millions of innocent people faced the prospect of losing their freedom, their families, their lives. Some succumbed and vanished from the face of history. But many brave souls made the decision that resistance – even if it meant death – was better than capitulation.

Night Soldiers

These are the “Night Soldiers” who people Alan Furst’s novels. They roam the foggy nights and steal across the rainy, cobbled streets of Prague, Berlin, Marseilles, Warsaw, Rome, and especially Paris. Furst’s protagonists all join the ranks of the Resistance in one way or another. They include a b-movie filmmaker, several writers, a newspaperman, a ship captain, as well as waiters, shopkeepers, jaded intellectuals, tarnished grand dames, and boozy British secret agents. Together they march, each in a small or large way, in the underground army that seeks to fight back against the Nazi occupiers.

Old-world Europe never looked so good as in Furst’s work. Bleak, breezy, despairingly hopeful, romantic and anguished: all of these describe the picture Furst paints of Europe under the Nazi occupation. Spanning the decade from 1933 to 1943, as the Germans slowly consolidate their political stranglehold on Europe, these novels are portraits of subjugated peoples who gradually succumb to the suffocating inevitability of Hitler’s regime.

Furst captures the history as well as the humanity. Life in Paris – where Furst lived for many years - goes on in all its manifold and celebrated variety, but doom slowly approaches from over the Eastern horizon, as inexorably as the boom of the German artillery. Only the bravest fight back; Furst tells their stories.

Alan Furst’s Influences

Furst wrote several detective novels in the 70s, but he turned to freelancing when they were unsuccessful. When he was sent into eastern Europe by an editor of "Esquire" in the mid-80s, Furst found his calling as an espionage writer.

Stunned by the fear and oppression that marked life behind the Iron Curtain, Furst turned his attention to the qualities that drive men and women to carry on in the face of overwhelming despair. The trip inspired his first historical espionage novel, Night Soldiers, the tale of a small-town Bulgarian lad who, after watching Nazi soldiers kick his brother to death, is caught up in a whirlwind of espionage and paranoia that takes him across the breadth of pre-war Europe.

Furst’s predecessors include, of course, Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, the two earliest writers of historically precise “literary” espionage. Other influences are Charles McCarry’s Christopher series and John LeCarre’s early works. Throw in Joseph Conrad's darkest adventures.

Like those writers, Furst is most interested in ordinary people forced into extraordinary deeds. The plot may be espionage, but the overriding theme is always pure courage and the individual’s attempt to do “what’s right:” for oneself, one’s friend’s, one’s country. Grace under pressure, so extolled by Hemingway, is always the hallmark (sooner or later) of a Furst hero.

Furst's Espionage Novels

Night Soldiers (1988)
Dark Star (1991)
The Polish Officer (1995)
The World at Night (1996)
Red Gold (1999)
Kingdom of Shadows (2000)
Blood of Victory (2003)
Dark Voyage (2004)
The Foreign Correspondent (2006)
Spies of Warsaw (2008)

Getting Started Reading Alan Furst

For the reader new to Alan Furst, a good place to start is with “The World at Night”(1996) and “Red Gold.” This 2-book sequence follows the exploits of Jean Casson, a Parisian filmmaker in 1940. (While many characters play roles in more than one novel, this is the only case of a sequel). Casson, seemingly cynical and aloof, is forced to take sides when friends and Jewish colleagues are threatened by the Nazis. His actions send him underground, where he is seldom more than a few steps ahead of a determined Gestapo agent and the Parisian police. Keeping a map of Paris close at hand, in fact, will help the reader follow the chase.

Sources and Further Reading

"Our Best Thriller Writer," by Brendan Bernhard
Alan Furst's Official Website
An Interview with Alan Furst

The copyright of the article Alan Furst's Spies in Old-World Europe in Mystery/Crime Fiction is owned by Fred Hasson. Permission to republish Alan Furst's Spies in Old-World Europe in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.