Midnight in Europe
Alan Furst, 2014
Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400069491
Summary
Paris, 1938. As the shadow of war darkens Europe, democratic forces on the Continent struggle against fascism and communism, while in Spain the war has already begun. Alan Furst, whom Vince Flynn has called "the most talented espionage novelist of our generation," now gives us a taut, suspenseful, romantic, and richly rendered novel of spies and secret operatives in Paris and New York, in Warsaw and Odessa, on the eve of World War II.
Cristian Ferrar, a brilliant and handsome Spanish emigre, is a lawyer in the Paris office of a prestigious international law firm. Ferrar is approached by the embassy of the Spanish Republic and asked to help a clandestine agency trying desperately to supply weapons to the Republic’s beleaguered army—an effort that puts his life at risk in the battle against fascism.
Joining Ferrar in this mission is a group of unlikely men and women: idealists and gangsters, arms traders and aristocrats and spies. From shady Paris nightclubs to white-shoe New York law firms, from brothels in Istanbul to the dockyards of Poland, Ferrar and his allies battle the secret agents of Hitler and Franco.
And what allies they are: there's Max de Lyon, a former arms merchant now hunted by the Gestapo; the Marquesa Maria Cristina, a beautiful aristocrat with a taste for danger; and the Macedonian Stavros, who grew up "fighting Bulgarian bandits. After that, being a gangster was easy." Then there is Eileen Moore, the American woman Ferrar could never forget.
In Midnight in Europe, Alan Furst paints a spellbinding portrait of a continent marching into a nightmare—and the heroes and heroines who fought back against the darkness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 20, 1941
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College; M.A., Pennsylvania State University
• Currently—lives in Sag Harbor (Long Island), New York
Alan Furst, an American author of historical spy novels, has been called "an heir to the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene," whom he cites along with Joseph Roth and Arthur Koestler as important influences. Most of his novels since 1988 have been set just prior to or during the Second World War and he is noted for his successful evocations of Eastern Europe peoples and places during the period from 1933 to 1944.
Biography
Born in New York City, and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he attended the Horace Mann School, Furst received a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1962 and an M.A. from Penn State in 1967.
While attending general studies courses at Columbia University, he became acquainted with Margaret Mead, for whom he later worked. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Furst worked in advertising and wrote magazine articles, most notably for Esquire, and as a columnist for the International Herald Tribune.
Early writings
Furst's papers were obtained by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. They include a 1963 letter from his grandfather, Max Stockman, urging Furst to become a teacher and "write as a sideline" in his spare time. The collection also includes early articles on a wide variety of topics, published in many magazines for which no common denominator can be found, including Architectural Digest, Elle, Esquire, 50 Plus, International Herald Tribune, Islands, New Choices, New York, New York Times, Pursuits, Salon, and Seattle Weekly.
The Ransom collection remarks: "Of note is the April 1984 Esquire article, "The Danube Blues," which sparked Furst's interest in writing espionage novels. Numerous slides of his 1983 Danube trip are also available.
His early novels (1976–1983) achieved limited success. One item, held in the Ransom collection, includes the manuscript for "One Smart Cookie" (with Debbi Fields, 1987), a commissioned biography of the owner of the Mrs. Fields Cookies company.
The year 1988 saw publication of Night Soldiers— inspired by his 1984 trip to Eastern Europe on assignment for Esquire—which invigorated his career and led to a succession of related titles. His output since 1988 includes more than a dozen works. Furst been called "an heir to the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene, whom he cites along with Joseph Roth and Arthur Koestler as important influences. He is especially noted for his successful evocations of Eastern Europe peoples and places during the period from 1933 to 1944. While all his historical espionage novels are loosely connected (protagonists in one book might appear as minor characters in another), only The World at Night and Red Gold share a common plot.
Writing in the New York Times, the novelist Justin Cartwright says that Furst, who lives in Sag Harbor, Long Island, "has adopted a European sensibility." Awarded a Fulbright teaching fellowship in 1969, Furst moved to Sommieres, France, outside of Montpellier, and taught at the University of Montpellier. He later lived for many years in Paris, a city that he calls "the heart of civilisation" which figures significantly in all his novels.
In 2011, the Tulsa Library Trust in Tulsa, Oklahoma selected Furst to receive its Helmerich Award, a literary prize given annually to honor a distinguished author's body of work. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/24/2014.)
Book Reviews
After a slow start, this spy thriller set in 1938...settles into a lazy pace, as it charts the attempts of two part-time arms dealers...to serve the Spanish Republic and its beleaguered army while most of the continent has its eye on Berlin.... As usual, Furst manages to capture the fragile, itinerant nature of European life during the interwar period, dropping in hints of the horror to come, but this is one of his less memorable efforts.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Through multiple novels, Furst has illuminated moments of reluctant courage and desperate love in a world teetering on the edge of destruction. He does so again here, and, as always, he does it exquisitely.... Furst is a master of mood, but, above all, he is able to show how the most personal of emotions—love, especially—drives the actions of men and women caught in a time of peril.
Booklist
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