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The Foreign Correspondent: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Furst
Publisher: Random House
Category: EBooks
List Price: $9.95
Buy New: $7.96
You Save: $1.99 (20%)
Rating:  63 reviews
Sales Rank: 2595
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
ASIN: B000GCFW00
Publication Date: May 30, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
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 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 emigre 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 emigre 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 Surete, 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 58 more reviews...
Good read for summer days or winter nights June 11, 2006
Leonard Fleisig (Washington, D.C.)
43 out of 47 found this review helpful
A friend of mine in London recently asked for a suggestion about a good book to read on the night train from Munich to Prague. I immediately recommended Alan Furst's King of Shadows, which opens on the night train from Budapest to Paris. An Alan Furst novel is often the answer to a request for a `good read'. His latest, "Foreign Correspondent", is no exception
Furst comes from a line of writers that can be traced back to both Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. Like Ambler, Furst often takes an unassuming, or unwitting civilian and immerses him in a world of mystery and intrigue in pre and post-World War II Europe. Foreign Correspondent opens in Civil War Spain but quickly moves to pre-war Paris. Italian journalist Carlo Weisz, a refugee from Mussolini's fascist Italy living in Paris, is part of a group of Italian expatriates who print a dissident newspaper, Liberazione, and smuggle it into Italy. The Italian secret police, the OVRA, has infiltrated the group. One of its members has been murdered and each member of the group is feeling the effects of the OVRA turning the screws on their operations. At the same time Weisz' day job as a foreign correspondent for Reuters takes him back and forth to the Berlin of Hitler, Himmler, and Goring. It is in Berlin that Weisz reunites with and reignites his affair with Christa von Schirren. Along the way Weisz comes to the attention of and is recruited by British Intelligence. The plot outline is simple: will Weisz and his cell continue to publish Liberazione and will Weisz be able to get Christa out of Berlin before the war that everyone knows is coming closes all borders.
Furst's strong point has always been how he sets the scene. His atmospherics are tremendous. His descriptions of the streets of Berlin or Paris or Barcelona and the atmosphere of those cities reek of authenticity. Similarly, Furst has a keen eye for the inner life of his protagonists. Almost invariably Furst manages to convey a real sense of how those protagonists think and feel. Both of these elements of his writing generally dominate his plotting and are primarily responsible for getting the reader to turn to the next page. This is certainly the case with Foreign Correspondent. The plot itself is not complex and it did not leave me wondering what was going to happen next. Similarly, the book did not really build to a real climax. The book ended more with a sigh than with a bang. Some may find that a bit disappointing. However, as readers of Furst's books already know his novels strive for authenticity. In much of life, particularly in the era Furst writes about, storybook endings or dramatic endings are more the exception than the rule. However, despite being aware of this I think the ending was more than a bit anti-climactic and more so than in some of his other novels.
All in all, and as the title of the review suggests, despite some weakness in plotting (in my opinion) Foreign Correspondent will make for a satisfying read for a long, lazy summer day or a freezing winter night.
 A Pleasurable Genre Novel-Rich in Atmosphere and Details June 9, 2006
Marco Antonio Abarca (Colorado)
42 out of 45 found this review helpful
It is December 1938 and a small group of Italian exiles meet in the back room of the Cafe Europa in Paris. The editor of their underground newspaper Liberazione has just been assasinated by the Italian secret police and they need to find a new editor. They choose Carlo Weisz, a foreign correspondent for the Rueters News Agency. The novel that follows is Carlo Weisz battle to keep the anti-fascist Liberazione alive and publishing. To do this, he must enter the shadowy world of French, British and Italian spies.
There are very few authors who can legitimately say they dominate a genre of literature. In the same way that John Le Carre owns the Cold War spy novel or Louis L'Amour the Western, Alan Furst is the great stylist of the 1930's spy novel. Furst is not interested in the high end spy but rather the every day working spy. In classic Furst style, "The Foreign Correspondent" takes the reader to battlefields of Spain, French internment camps, Genoese dockyards and to Paris' working class neighborhoods. Because Furst writes only about this period, he is able to fill his novels with the gritty details that make his stories believable.
So how does "The Foreign Correspondent" fall within the body of Furst's work. It is somewhere in the middle. It is not his best nor his worst novel. I like the world Alan Furst creates and even one of his average novels gives me great pleasure. For those who like Furst's novels, check out the works of Eric Ambler, the first master of this genre.
Italian Emigres Battle OVRA Fascist Agents in France June 10, 2006
Prauge Traveler (Germany)
16 out of 20 found this review helpful
In "The Foreign Correspondent", Alan Furst has moved away from his traditional novels populated with characters from lesser known Eastern European nations. The main characters are Italian emigres in France, which does carry on the line of lost and exiled heroes that often appear in his novels. I think he has been moving in new directions since his last novel, "Dark Voyage", set primarily on board a freighter, and these latest works are as successful as the previous despite their differences. Carlo Weisz is also a more traditional hero than some of Furst's other sordid characters: he is a reporter for Reuters with a love interest working against the Nazis in Berlin. The setting is still in the late interwar years, a commonality with the previous novels, and Weisz makes a difficult and dangerous transition from mild opposition against the Fascists in Italy to outright subversion of his home government through the course of the novel; their particular weapon being a anti-fascist underground newspaper. The crisis is ignited by a political assassination in Paris and has far reaching consequences for Weisz and his companions. Throughout the novel Weisz and his emigre friends are hounded by OVRA operatives, courted by both the British SIS and the French Interior Ministry, and must find ways to survive in a world that is often annoyed with their presence. Furst also continues to include some familiar characters from his pervious adventures at the famous Brasserie Heininger in a very well written chapter (it is never a forced encounter, surprisingly). What will keep you up late reading is the main dilemma of the novel: will both Weisz and his lover Christa von Schirren survive, and will they be together?
Although this novel can easily be read as a stand-alone book, some readers will enjoy beginning their foray into Furst's world with "Night Soldiers", his original and possibly best spy novel. This book introduces several characters who make appearances throughout Furst's other novels set in the same period of time and general geographical local. Because of this fact, I highly recommend reading this novel first, although those that follow can typically be read in any particular order (the exception being the stories involving Jean Casson - World at Night and Red Gold).
What makes Furst's loosely structured series so compelling is that 1; they are very well researched and historical very accurate, especially with regard to spy craft - as I understand it through academic experience only. 2; the characters are extremely flawed, very believable and interesting to empathize with - all of the characters and their adventures provoke much thought. 3; the novels do not attempt to achieve a false sense of conclusion at their end - they always allow the reader to decide for him/herself what happens, and they rarely resolve the feeling of tension that pervades Furst's works. 4; the secondary characters are always very well developed and much more interesting than their sometimes small roles would have the reader believe- so one is always off balance (who will live, who will die - who can be trusted, who cannot?). 5; Furst does an excellent job of setting the atmosphere of terror that resulted from the conflict between fascism, Stalinism and freedom during the secret wars preceding the outbreak of the Second World War.
Although this is not Furst's best novel by far (for that start with "Night Soldiers"), you cannot go wrong with the "Foreign Correspondent". For anyone interested in reading and enjoying spy stories, or stories of world war two, this book is a must read.
 Old and Tired July 2, 2006
Charlotte Vale-Allen (CT USA)
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
Typically, Furst has hit the big time with his least successful effort. I have read every book the author has ever written and it would appear that his work has become incredibly formulaic. While the early books had heart and energy and characters who were lost and lonely but always valiant, this time around the whole thing creaks like a haunted house. The characters are plastic and unsympathetic; their dilemmas are old news. Furst has plowed these fields far more productively in the past. The Foreign Correspondent is an old turkey overstuffed with research that practically shouts at the reader, "Hey, check me out! I am research. Am I fascinating and great, or what?" No subtlety, a terrible (almost criminal) misuse of commas that actually alter the meaning of sentences, and a mistreatment of English as a primary language. (Allright is NOT one word!) Who edited this? They need to be forced to attend nightly grammar classes for six months. When they've finished that, they need to attend basic sentence structure classes. In the meantime, I agree with the other reviewers: Mr. Furst needs to create a new formula. This one is not even remotely representative of his best work.
You don't have to feel guilty reading this literary thriller! June 4, 2006
Colby Jordan (California)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I picked this up for my dad for Father's Day as he is a big Fan of Furst's writing, but started reading the fist chapter--just to check it out--and was unable to stop reading. Finished it in two days, and this is not a breezy read! The setting is 1939 Paris and foreign correspondent Carlo Weisz goes to work as an editor for an underground journal reacting against the fascist regime in Italy. The plot is simple as it revolves around his attempts to enlist help in the cause, his arrest and eventual escape; but the real pleasure here is not so much the twist and turns of the plot but the shadowy underworld that Furst creates, peopled with just as shadowy-and sometimes menacing-characters. The tension in this thriller comes from unknown sources, the reality of what "IS", the undisclosed, not from one evil source. In the end it is about not succumbing to the way things are but taking steps towards change, no matter how small they may be. This is a beautifully written book that should be on everyone's reading list!
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