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Title: Night Soldiers : A Novel by Alan Furst ISBN: 0-375-76000-8 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 09 July, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (31 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Story of Intrigue and War
Comment: Alan Furst explores pre and war time Europe though the eyes of Khristo Stoianev in his book Night Soldier. Khristo is a Bulgarian youth who watches helplessly as his younger brother is kicked to death by Nazis. Feeling powerless he hooks up with revolutionaries. Soon he must flee from Bulgaria and journeys to the Soviet Union to train as a spy. Night Soldier's is a chronicle of his life through a turbulent time as Khristo journeys through Europe.
Furst tells this story of intrigue and war with great skill. The story begins with the brutal death of Khristo's brother and continues from one war torn setting to another. It appears that there was no place of peace and hope for the people of this time and place. Furst clearly defines the brutality of the period and the difficult moral choices which the people of Europe were faced with. He has peopled the story with intriguing characters who react with courage, strength, cunning, avarice and fear. Many like Khristo are trying their best to see their way through these years to survive.
Khristo is an ever interesting character. First driven to do what is right he is given a taste of the difficult choices in the life of a spy, when a lover betrays him and his superiors request that he take care of her. He soon finds the Russian tentacles under Stalin to be as evil as the Nazi's who he is fighting. He would like to elude them both and tries to, but in a warring Europe it is no easy task.
For those interested in stories set in WWII or tales of intrigue this book is recommended.
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent Book 1 of Furst's WW2 Espionage Output
Comment: First of all, no writer can approach Furst's ability to convey the oppressive atmosphere of Europe in the years leading up to WWII and the war years. What LeCarré did for the Cold War, Furst does for the fifteen years preceding it. Here, in the first of his six novels so far on the covert intelligence wars of the era, he establishes his style and tone. The book starts in a small fishing village in Bulgaria in the early 1930s, where a teenager in forced to watch a fascist militia beat his brother to death. Furst carefully shows how a Soviet agent eventually comes to his town and recruits him to the NKVD, starting him down a long journey into the darkness of espionage. The book then proceeds in a somewhat fractured episodic manner, as the Bulgarian Khristo grows up as a night soldier (spy), struggling to stay alive and return to a normal life, in his own personal (to borrow the phrase from Celiné) journey to the end of night.
The book takes Khristo from terrifying training in Moscow, to the sad lost cause of the Spanish Civil War (where he sees first hand how Germany used the alliance with Franco as a proving ground for new weapons and tactics), to occupied France, and eventually back through the Balkans. Khristo is a sympathetic character, but like many of Furst's leading men-indeed, this may be a feature of all spies and not Furst's fault-he is a little too enigmatic and withdrawn to fully capture the reader's heart. At the core of the book is a small cadre of friends from his training days, who, despite shifting allegiances and loyalties over the fifteen years or so, try as much as possible to help each other survive. Unfortunately, one of the weaknesses of the book, in it's episodic construction, is that in covering such a large swath of time and locations, it's hard to keep track of who in who (especially once you introduce cover identities and aliases), who they are working for (agencies and factions proliferate), and under what motivation.
Despite these difficulties, the book is certainly worth reading for its amazing level of detail and tension in set piece sequences, as well as it's ability to convey a sense of Europe gone mad-trapped between the equal horrors of fascism and Stalinist communism.
Rating: 4
Summary: An above average spy novel
Comment: Interesting spy novel set in the world of espionage in Europe in the 1930's and 40's. The main character is Khristo Stoianov, a Bulgarian. The story begins in 1934 when Khristo's brother is murdered by a fascist street gang. Sensing his potential, and realising he is now longer safe in his own village, a local Soviet agent recruits him into the NKVD, a forerunner of the KGB. His first assignment is in Spain during the Civil War. Things turn sour however and as he about to become a victim of the Stalinist purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Once there he is co-opted by anti-Soviet elements in an assassination plot involving British intelligence. He is imprisoned, escapes when Germany invades France and ends up in the French resistance. In the final stages of World War II he is again recruited, this time by the OSS and eventually decides to undertake one final, hazardous mission.
Mr Furst is a good writer, his characterisations are entertaining, the book is well researched with convincing descriptions of various European locales and regions and the plot is coherent and plausible, at least for three-quarters of the novel. The part of the story set in Paris for me is the best, the passages involving Khristo and Alexandra, a woman he becomes involved with I particularly liked. You get a real sense of what Paris must have been like in those nervous, decadent pre-war years.
After that though, I thought the book lost focus. There is a lengthy diversion involving an American OSS operative in France which comes out of nowhere and doesn't seem to hang properly with the rest of the story. Up until then you felt you were reading more of a character study, how average individuals such as Khristo would get swept up and carried away by the brutal forces at work in Europe in the era. However the second half of the book seemed to try to assume the mantle of the epic, sweeping historical novel, with characters, events and locations rushing past you. I felt that if the focus had been kept on Khristo the book would have been far more rewarding. The ending is also a little too easy. Nonetheless, the merits of the book raise it above the average run-of-the-mill spy story in many ways, yet Mr Furst does enough here and there to make me feel it could have been better.
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Title: Dark Star : A Novel by Alan Furst ISBN: 0375759999 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 09 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Polish Officer : A Novel by Alan Furst ISBN: 0375758275 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 09 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The World at Night : A Novel by Alan Furst ISBN: 0375758585 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Red Gold : A Novel by Alan Furst ISBN: 0375758593 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst ISBN: 0375758267 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 09 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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