From Alan Furst, whom The New York Times calls “America’s preeminent spy novelist,” comes an epic story of romantic love, love of country, and love of freedom–the story of a secret war fought in elegant hotel bars and first-class railway cars, in the mountains of Spain and the backstreets of Berlin. It is an inspiring, thrilling saga of everyday people forced by their hearts’ passion to fight in … in the war against tyranny.
By 1938, hundreds of Italian intellectuals, lawyers and journalists, university professors and scientists had escaped Mussolini’s fascist government and taken refuge in Paris. There, amid the struggles of émigré life, they founded an Italian resistance, with an underground press that smuggled news and encouragement back to Italy. Fighting fascism with typewriters, they produced 512 clandestine newspapers. The Foreign Correspondent is their story.
Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers’ hotel. But this is no romantic traged–it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini’s fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine émigré newspaper. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and secured a job as a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor.
Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain, reporting on the last campaign of the Spanish civil war. But as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Sûreté, by agents of the OVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondent is a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or murder.
The Foreign Correspondent is the story of Carlo Weisz and a handful of antifascists: the army officer known as “Colonel Ferrara,” who fights for a lost cause in Spain; Arturo Salamone, the shrewd leader of a resistance group in Paris; and Christa von Schirren, the woman who becomes the love of Weisz’s life, herself involved in a doomed resistance underground in Berlin.
The Foreign Correspondent is Alan Furst at his absolute best–taut and powerful, enigmatic and romantic, with sharp, seductive writing that takes the reader through darkness and intrigue to a spectacular denouement.
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What I love the most about Furst’s books is the fact that his characters are not some superhumans but ordinary people who do extraordinary things in times when most would choose to keep their heads down to protect their lives. In “The Foreign Correspondent,” Furst introduces us to Carlo Weisz, an émigré living in Paris – a Reuters correspondent and one of the contributors to Liberazione, an antifascist newspaper directed against Mussolini and his regime. However, fascist Italy’s power spreads much further than the country’s borders and soon the entire group of Liberazione’s writers is being targeted. Add to it a rekindled relationship with a former lover, who’s gotten involved into something extremely dangerous in her native Germany, a British agent with his own agenda, a Spanish fighter with a story to tell, and you get yourselves a perfect read for all fans of noir/spy thrillers set in pre-war France. Characterization is marvelous, as always; research is worthy of the highest of praises (you feel yourself right there, you taste the food, you see the streets, you are one hundred percent immersed into the atmosphere of that era), and the plot itself is well-constructed and intriguing. Highly recommended!
I I am an Alan Furst fan and have read all of his novels. I enjoy period pieces, especially of the years surrounding WWII in Europe. His spy novels, except Night Soldiers, which is a more “epic” story, are stories about an “everyman” who is called upon by events to resist and oppose the Nazis – the missions are small events in the overall panoply of the war but the characters are believable and engaging and the plots are realistic stories. Each one stands alone – this is not a series – only two books have the same protagonist – but he has a way of re-using secondary characters and locales (like Count Janos Polanyi and Brasserie Heininger) that are fun to encounter if you read the books in order of publication. Furst’s writing will hook you from the first paragraph and you are off on an engaging adventure. The Foreign Correspondent is typical of his spy novels – it is a terrific read
Furst is masterful capturing this much neglected period of history, between the Great Wars. This novel was quite a revelation with its focus resting on events between the two great wars. As the storm clouds of World War II are looming we are there via Alan Furst’s pen, experiencing the noir-like, uneasy last hurrah of a free Paris (including a brief dalliance with the film world); to soon fall under the grip of the jackbooted Nazi hordes. In the meantime anxiety builds as loyalties are split. The Communists metastasize their subversive ways in their quest for power as the sinister forces of the Fascists grow, exploiting every weakness, sometimes violently,
Furst is masterful in capturing this much neglected period prior to Hitler’s onslaught, and as such is nuanced and patient as he builds inexorably to a compelling climax at the end of the narrative. I especially enjoyed the scenes recalling Franco’s Spanish Civil War. Such a superbly rendered historical fiction work is “The Foreign Correspondent” that this reader almost felt as though he was there; a witness to history careening toward a brutal cataclysm, yet it’s a tale told in very personal terms from the perspective of our leading man…the foreign correspondent.
I hope to be reading many more works by this gifted author, Mr. Alan Furst.
Furst’s recent books, this one included, are watery shadows of his brilliant early work. The new ones are thin, strong on atmosphere and sense of time and place, but with a bare-bones plot. He’s dialing it in these days.
Read this several years ago and I’m about to read it again.
Alan Furst does a fabulous job of putting the reader into a historical immersion with detail, characters and plot. I love his books.
Satisfying and atmospheric.
Alan Furst is a magnificent writer. Intelligent articulate prose. I have read all his books.
Allan Furst is my husband and my favorite author! You learn so much about World War II from his wonderful spy novels.
Dialog excellent and dated – remember this from years ago.
Allen Furst is always a reliable author. I enjoyed this very much. His sense of history makes his novels a cut above the ordinary.
Loved the plot twists. Loved the characters. Thought the ending a bit pat.
Furst’s novels are well researched and the plot is always unpredictable. WWII is over Europe and the people know death and suffering are looming just around the corner. The characters can sometimes be unsympathetic but they are always interesting and true to character. Highly recommend all his novels.
About a period that I know very little about. A Polish career army officer as his army collapse in 1938,being ordered to go underground and be one of the leaders of the Polish resistance.
Furst is great as usual.
Not as good as some of his earlier books but being a fan of Furst I enjoyed it non the less