The Foreign Correspondent

Night Soldiers #9

by Alan Furst

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 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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Espionage, Thriller, Mystery, World War II, War

288 pages, Hardcover

First published May 30, 2006

About the author

Alan Furst is widely recognized as the current master of the historical spy novel. Born in New York, he has lived for long periods in France, especially Paris. He now lives on Long Island.

Night Soldiers 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)
* The Spies of Warsaw (2008)
* Spies of the Balkans (2010)
* Mission to Paris (2012)
* Midnight in Europe (2013)
* Under Occupation (2019)

Stand-alone novels
* Your day in the barrel (1976)
* The Paris drop (1980)
* The Caribbean Account (1981)
* Shadow Trade (1983)

For more information, see Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

“A fat man with a Nazi party pin in his lapel played Cole Porter on a white piano.”
― Alan Furst, The Foreign Correspondent



A nice solid Furst novel. I took a small pause from reading Furst because his books had started to all be blending in together (maybe by design), but 'The Foreign Correspondent' was like a well-timed nosh. The story was tight and well-paced, there was an interesting memoir-within-a-novel that worked rather well since the protagonist in the novel was the ghost-writer of the memoir.

Anyway, not on my top-shelf of Furst's novels, but it was a good Night Soldier's addition that focused on the period of 1938-1939 when Italy (under Il Duce) formally aligned with Hitler's Germany while also bringing back a lot of Furst's crossover characters in small appearances (as well as the perpetually cameoed Brasserie Heininger).

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A group of political emigres have taken refuge in Paris in 1938 and set up a clandestine newspaper opposing fascism. When the editor is murdered it would appear OVRA, Mussolini's version of the Gestapo, is behind the killing. Carlo Weisz, a journalist for Reuters, is in Spain when the murder takes place reporting on the Spanish civil war. He now becomes editor. His work with Reuters takes him to Berlin where he falls in love with a high connected German woman who is involved in opposing the Nazis.

The Foreign Correspondent is very well researched and the period detail is good but, though it was an enjoyable read, for me it often lacked the tightness of plot and suspense to keep me fully engaged.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book very disappointing. I snatched it from a bookshelf at home, thinking it was the book that provided the basis for Hitchcock’s 1940 film, “Foreign Correspondent.“ Oops. It is a 1930’s spy novel all right, but one published in 2006 by highly regarded writer Alan Furst. Ok. No big deal. It could still be pretty good, right? I have enjoyed more than a few books that transport one back to the time and place, capturing a certain feel. I was still hoping for Hitchcockian adventure. Alas. Furst has made considerable effort to capture the sensibility of say, Eric Ambler. Yet, while the structure was certainly in place here, with a sympathetic hero, a heroic damsel needing our hero’s help, bad guys aplenty of the fascist and nazi persuasion, spies and reporters, the whole just seemed for me less than the sum of its parts. Although our hero Carlo Weisz was certainly heroic enough, although looked at individually the elements make sense, I never really felt all that involved. It was as if the writer was engaged in a solely intellectual undertaking. It felt to me that the book lacked soul. I expect I am in the minority here.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stars-wise, this is either a strong 3 or a weak 4. Normally, I would rate Alan Furst's novels more highly, and this one was a solid 4-star up until the last 50 pages or so. I think the problem I had was that the author doesn't seem to flesh out the last part of the story enough. Furst gives us a lovely build-up, but when his protagonist is in the most danger, he (the author) rushes through to the end.

Still, I was entertained. All the usual elements were there: exiles and refugees, Stalinist agents lurking in alleys, fascist secret police drinking wine in cafes, star-crossed love affairs, a sense of impending doom hanging over everything. Reading Alan Furst is like watching Casablanca or one of those old wartime spy films with Charles Boyer. That said, this one wasn't as good as most of his other books.

[Branwen Sedai *of the Brown Ajah* · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This is a war, and, in war, sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, and, sometimes, when you think you've lost, you've won."

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

... an excellent portrayal of anti-fascist resistance, in this case against Mussolini. Furst's place descriptions, as always, are superb. The plot is satisfyingly complex, and the ending is appropriately ambiguous - the lives Furst explores never have clear demarcations.

[Michael Klein · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I was so taken with the first Furst book I read, "The Spies of Warsaw." Also, Furst is considered a master of the historical spy novel, and he is writing about the time period I am writing about. More or less. So why not sit back and watch a master at work?

I found "The Foreign Correspondent" to be slightly disappointing, particularly when held up to "Warsaw."

The problem I think I had with this novel was that we never really got to know enough about the main character. Which sounds funny - his name literally appears on every single page - but still, there was something distant about the way Furst presented him to us. As a result, there didn't seem to be as much at stake for him - though obviously a journalist who dabbles in spycraft on the eve of WWII could certainly lose his head for it. It was just that I had a hard time caring about him.

I kept feeling like there was going to be another character introduced who would be our protaganist. But, no, it was Weisz. And then we are eventually introduced to a past love interest who motivates the second half of the novel. But wait, what about her is so special? Nothing that I can see. And she appears so late in the story - is in and out again (no pun intended) - she wasn't enough for me to see Weisz take the risks he did, and since she wasn't worth it, I had a hard time empathizing with him.

Furst does a more capitivating job for me in bringing secondary and teritiary characters to life: the resistors in Italy, the drunken Greek sailors, the Nazi propaganda ministers, the British spymaster, and certainly the Genoan black marketeers - though all their parts are much smaller, I felt a greater connection with them than I did with Carlo Weisz.

I still am a huge Alan Furst fan - I just think the story of Carlo Weisz might have been a bit of a misfire. I have more of his novels in the queue and I look forward to reading them. If you are a fan of WWII spy novels, I recommend Mr. Furst to you, though perhaps not this one, but rather "The Spies of Warsaw."

[Ellie Midwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This turned out to be really yummy. Good "cloak and dagger" stuff, but with nary a cloak nor a dagger in sight. Italian emigres living in Paris put together newspapers to be smuggled into Italy, where Mussolini has control of the information flow.
This was much quieter than a lot of spy/war novels. Instead of the fast-paced action, it depicts what life was like in Europe immediately before WWII began in earnest. Everyone was tense, knowing war was coming, but not knowing what they should do or how it would play out in their own lives. The author really knows Europe, and he knows his history. The little details made me feel I was there.
I had to read the first 70 pages quite slowly so I could keep track of who everyone was and what side they were on and how they fit into the picture. After that I could speed up a bit. Not that I was in a hurry, but the first 70 pages I really had to concentrate!

[Patrick Sherriff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this adventure through Paris on the eve of the Second World War, partly because of all the references to newspaper journalism as a force for good, partly for its portrait of emigres' lives that don't seem so dissimilar from my own as an expat in a foreign land, and partly because the age we live in feels a lot like a prelude to disaster and it's inspiring to feel that people of conscience in a previous age could make a difference, if at great personal cost. Oh, and did I mention that this was a love story too?

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[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the world of Alan Furst the clock is set to either just before the start of or just after the start of the Second World War. He excels at presenting that sick feeling in the pit of the stomach that things are likely to get much worse ... and soon.

The Foreign Correspondent is the story of Reuters foreign correspondent Carlo Weisz, from Trieste, who now lives in Paris working for Reuters, and in his spare time editing an anti-fascist publication called Liberazione, which is attracting the unwelcome attentions of OVRA, Mussolini's secret police.

Weisz gets connected up with various British Intelligence operatives, who are eager to use his skills against Mussolini -- especially after the latter signs the so-called Pact of Steel with Hitler.

It is June 1939, and we are three months from the Nazi invasion of Poland. Like all of Furst's novels, there is a brooding atmosphere of impending violence, which no one is quite nearly as good at as he is.

There are several interesting subplots set in Germany, Spain, and Italy. I have enjoyed all the Furst novels I have read; and The Foreign Correspondent is well worth reading.

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

In times of trouble I have been known to turn often to the exquisite narrations of Kobna Holdbrook-Smith reading the Rivers of London series in order to take my mind off things, but it turns out that when it all goes to shit Alfred Molina will do as well. Alan Furst is very concerned with what's going on with everyone's breasts, but otherwise this was a good little story about journalists fighting fascism.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you, Susan, for turning me on to this well-told spy story. I have to believe that Furst is among the best in this genre. The setting--Europe in the 30’s, in the throes of fascism--is so fateful and Furst’s knowledge of the era is impressive. He gave his characters enough life to care about them, too, which I don’t imagine is always the case with stories of this sort. I have to say I also came away with a greater appreciation for historical fiction, in general. It’s such a painless and effective way to learn things you may not have known much about. Plus, if the writer is as good as this one is, the story itself can be artful and involving. It comes as no surprise, Susan, that you’ve been right all along about books of this stripe.

[Merilee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fun thriller listened to in the car. This one narrated by Alfred Molina, who does a great job with all the accents, except for pronouncing Madchen Maadchen:-(

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Foreign Correspondent opens with an assassination. The reader sees it unfold through the eyes of its mastermind: a shadowy figure seated at the back of a luxury sedan, the silver medal of the Italian Fascist Party pinned to his lapel. With icy satisfaction he watches his victim enter a Paris hotel on a rainy evening in 1938, where a gunman bearing a silencer-tipped Beretta is waiting. Yet there is no mystery to this murder. It is intended as a direct, chilling message to the community of Italian intellectuals who fled Mussolini’s Italy: shut up or else…

This is Alan Furst’s ninth novel in a genre that could be described as literary historical espionage. As with his earlier books, The Foreign Correspondent takes place in Europe as it slides inexorably toward the Second World War. Carlo Weisz is the title character, an Italian newspaper reporter whose career was derailed when the fascists tightened control of the press. He eventually joins other political émigrés in Paris, where he finds work as a Reuters correspondent. His assignments take him from the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War to Hitler’s Berlin, crossing a continent where democracy is gradually being extinguished.

But Weisz retains a deep affection for his homeland. Using a pseudonym, he has been writing for Liberazione, an underground newspaper that “kicked like a mule” against the Italian government. It takes the efforts of a network of defiant anti-fascists—truck drivers, train conductors, even schoolgirls—to smuggle it back to Italy. As the story begins, Weisz finds himself inching across a treacherous tightrope. Can he and his colleagues continue to produce Liberazione after its editor is gunned down by Mussolini’s agents?

There are more quandaries. Weisz begins to receive overtures from other clandestine organizations, including the British Secret Intelligence Service. He realizes that “…spies and journalists were fated to go through life together, and it was sometimes hard to tell one from the other.” As the stakes become higher, and personal, he is drawn more deeply into the risky war of ideas that raged long before the shooting started in September 1939.

Furst’s style is spare, elegant, and evocative. The narrative is fast-paced and suspenseful, though there are few chase scenes and very little gunplay. Furst perfectly captures the undercurrent of ambiguity and suspicion that permeates Carlo Weisz’s existence. He masterfully weaves together this tension with the menace of the impending war, and adds to it romantic images—crowded cafes, softly-lit restaurants—of Parisian life. The effect is spellbinding.

This is a wonderfully detailed story, combining first-rate entertainment with the kind of history lesson that is rarely found in a classroom. Vividly-imagined characters bring to life the struggles of people who resisted fascism through daily, anonymous acts of bravery. For them, and Carlo Weisz, each word of truth was a vital weapon in the war against totalitarianism. Thanks to Alan Furst, 21st century readers are granted an intriguing glimpse into the hearts of these secret soldiers.

[David Lowther · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read all of Furst's novels, most of them twice, apart from Mission to Paris and I intend to come to that after a second helping of Spies of Warsaw and Spies of the Balkans.

All of his heroes are of the reluctant variety, dragged into espionage because of circumstances that can't be controlled. There's usually a love affair, often illicit. Many are preddominantly set in Paris, mostly before the war.

These are the familiar ingredients of The Foreign Corespondent and places and people from othyer stories make fleeting appearances in the story. There is, however, one big difference, as there always is with Furst's tales, and that is the subject matter. This time it's about Italian emigres living in Paris before the war struggling to produce an anti-fascist newspaper in the face of opposition from the Italian Secret Service resident in the French capital.

The tasks of the heroes are always dangerous but never impossible. The opposition is always threatening but never unbeatable. Back streets and tenament buildings are always dark and inhospitable. The reader can smell the smoke and food in Parisian restaurants. The plot is plausible and excitingly told and leaves you wanting more from this particular hero. The prose is mysterious and beautiful, often leaving the reader to work out for him or herself what exactly is going on. The Foreign Correspondent, like all of Furst's spy stories, is a superbly constructed teasing puzzle.

David Lowther Author of The Blue Pencil (www.thebluepencil.co.uk)
www.davidlowtherblog.wordpress.com

[Nancy Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reminiscent of film noir, this is a dark story of intrigue and resistance in Berlin, Mussolini's Italy, and Paris immediately prior to WW2. Carlo Weisz, an Italian emigre himself, becomes, as the result of murder, the publisher of an Italian antifascist newspaper in Paris where many Italian emigres are trying to save their country. Carlo also happens to be a correspondent for Reuters, so he is able to travel across Europe, including Berlin, where his girlfriend is about to be arrested. Working with the British, he and his associates plan to increase their newspaper's production in Italy to fight the fascists, while the British promise to try to rescue his lady from Berlin. This book really draws you in, and although it is very dark, it's a great story and wonderfully written.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the motto for this book has to be "Il faut en finir" -- roughly, this can't go on.
This story takes place toward the end of 1938 through the summer of 1939' it follows the experiences of Carlo Weisz and his fellow refugees from the Mussolini regime in Paris. Carlo is in an extremely unique position as a journalist working for the Reuters News Service in Paris, miles above pretty insubstantial jobs his colleagues have -- he is the only one in the emigre group that is able to pursue his profession and travel all over Europe. He is a member of an anti-fascist group who is running an underground newspaper

The ending felt a little jumbled and incomplete -- I wonder if these characters end up in other novels.

[Luca Cozzi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ero indeciso tra 2 e 3 stelle. La storia mi è piaciuta (è il mio genere) ma trovo che lo stile narrativo sia poco fluido e troppo spesso ho dovuto rileggere dei pezzi. Il difetto maggiore di questo romanzo, tuttavia, è il finale, troppo frettoloso: l'autore lascia troppe situazioni irrisolte, troppe cose non dette, bastavano poche pagine in più per conferire l'adeguata compiutezza a una trama che, davvero, meritava un finale meno precipitoso.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Late 1938 in Europe was a time of dislocation and growing fear. In Germany, Kristallnacht signaled the end of hope for any Jew smart enough to understand its implications. Austria and Czechoslovakia were  now part of the German Reich, adding to the flow of refugees. In Spain, Generalissimo Franco and his German and Italian allies were squashing the last remnants of resistance by the Republic. Mussolini's Italy wavered between the neutrality urged by Britain and France and what would become the Pact of Steel with Nazi Germany. Alan Furst's superb historical espionage novel, The Foreign Correspondent, opens during this period, late in the winter of 1938, and concludes late in the summer of 1939, shortly before Hitler's invasion of Poland.

A superb historical espionage novel
The action in The Foreign Correspondent revolves around a small group of Italian antifascist emigrés who publish an occasional clandestine newspaper named Liberazione. (This was just one of some 500 such publications that came out of the growing Italian emigré community in Paris.) The central character is Carlo Weisz, the journalist of the book's title who works by day as a foreign correspondent for the London-based Reuters wire service. He, and his collaborators in Liberazione, come under attack by the OVRA, Mussolini's secret police force dedicated to stamping out antifascism.

Meanwhile, Carlo's reporting assignments in Spain, Germany, and Czechoslovakia bring him into contact with agents of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). As Furst notes, "spies and journalists were fated to go through life together, and it was sometimes hard to tell one from the other." Furst brilliantly uses every opportunity to convey a visceral feeling for the tragic events unfolding in all those places. It would be difficult to find a nonfiction history book that does a better job of that than The Foreign Correspondent. This is truly an excellent historical espionage novel.

About the author
Alan Furst has been writing books since 1976. Following the publication of four standalone novels, he launched the Night Soldiers series of historical espionage novels in 1988. At this writing, he has published a total of 14 novels in the series. The Foreign Correspondent was number 9.

[Sam Reaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Furst's series about espionage in Europe in the late thirties, set in Paris (and points east) and featuring a multi-national ensemble cast, is an extended hommage to the Eric Ambler tradition of spy novels: atmospheric, understated, worldly-wise. The series evokes the dread and fatalism of the period, the waning days of peace with fascism on a seemingly unstoppable march.
In this one, Carlo Weisz, an Italian journalist working for Reuters in Paris, is running an anti-fascist Italian newspaper published in Paris and smuggled into Italy, while trying to find a way to get the woman he loves out of Berlin before the Gestapo closes in on her resistance network. British intelligence is willing to help, but only if he agrees to go back into Italy on an errand for them. Faced with nothing but bad choices, Weisz does what he has to do.
It's that ethos that gives the series its pathos; when the world is ending, you go for the least bad option and keep a stiff upper lip. Compelling story about a tragic age.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Furst always delivers on tense WWII spy thrillers about ordinary people caught up in shady deals and doing the best they can to get through it with their lives and souls intact. S. Kolb, the drab little spy, gets some time to... well, “shine” is the wrong term for such a fiercely unassuming person, but his exasperation on dealing with idealists and lovers was a lovely counterpoint to the hero’s point of view (his reaction to the heroine in mid-daring-rescue wanting to go back and save her dogs was so good). I liked Carlo a lot, I liked the focus on Italy this time around, and I enjoyed the overarching themes of journalism, propaganda, and spying (and the blurred lines between them).

[Jessie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story was just not that thrilling, once again, gratuitous breast describing and the author wrote sex scenes like he was really embarrassed about it. One nice example: "Back in his room, he fell asleep and found her in his dreams - the first time they'd made love...when the dreams awoke him, he found himself again inspired, and then, in the darkness, lived those moments once more".

[Genevieve Brassard · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5: I was hoping to like this book so I could read other titles by that author (liked the setting and premise) but the casual misogyny annoyed me :-( Life is too short and there are too many books out there 😉

[Ryan H · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it took me awhile to get into it and understand the characters, once the plot was set it was an intriguing story of exile and espionage in pre-WWII Europe.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd novel to review. While the story is interesting—under siege emigre journalists seeking to undermine the Mussolini regime just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War—it lacks one notable Furstian ingredient: opacity. The plot, even the prose, is extremely straight forward, even though its ending is extraordinarily abrupt. I am curious if Furst dealt with some personal challenge when writing that required him to cut the book short. Still, Furst is still an enchanting writer, and describes so well an effort that may fail in the end, and the actors know it may fail (no writer captures doom as capably), that you cannot find enjoyment in the text.

[Kirk Bado · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a mess

[Ivonne Rozo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing book, I couldn’t get into the history, it seems too many anecdotes to tell but nothing really linked or exiting.

[Dick Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel by Alan Furst spans the period from December 1938 to July 1939 and takes place in Italy, Berlin, but mostly in Paris.
The central character is Carlo Weisz, an Italian émigré whose day job is a foreign correspondent for the Reuters bureau in Paris. But his writing talents also have him working at odd hours as editor and occasional contributor to a clandestine newspaper that is part of the resistance against Mussolini's fascist government. He’s also the ghostwriter on behalf of Colonel Ferrara, an Italian army officer and antifascist, who is writing an angry book about his military experiences.
Weisz is walking a tightrope of intrigue and is a target of the Italian fascist underground organization, British and Russian spy outfits, as well as the French Surete. In one clever bit of writing, Weisz has been called to a meeting in Furst’s favorite fictional Paris brasserie, the Heininger, and meets a fellow named André Szara who is correspondent for Pravda but is also a Russian spy working for the NKVD. The alert reader and fan of Furst’s novels, like myself, will recognize Szara as the protagonist of an earlier book called Dark Star.
There’s somehow time in Weisz’s life for romance. The love of his life, Christa von Schirren, lives in Berlin and is married. Weisz tries to persuade her to leave and join him in Paris before the certain war breaks out. She puts him off, however, citing unfinished work with the anti-Nazi underground before she can join him. Meanwhile, Weisz is not without feminine companionship, thanks to the wiles of Veronique, a Paris art dealer. And if that weren’t enough, there is also Madame Rigaud, Weisz’s landlady. She’s playful and gives him strong hints that her black dress could be removed to reveal a lovely treat for him.
An enjoyable read as Furst captures the growing gloom of coming war while the tension builds to a satisfying conclusion.

[Ioana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meticulously researched, painstakingly detailed historical portrait of the Italian resistance (esp in France) during WWII: I learned more about the war reading this than I ever did in a history class in school- this is the kind of book that induces one to look up every reference and, along the way, learn about aspects of history it may never have occurred to one to ask about. Such as: the existence of King Zog I, self-proclaimed King of Albania and only Muslim king in all of Europe; the plight of Italian resistance fighters fighting abroad; the Spanish nationalist alliance with the Nazis in the Civil War of '36-'39; the reaction of the French and British to The Pact of Steel and Mussolini's alliance to Hitler; the cowardice of the US in denying landing rights to the SS St. Louis, a ship from Germany filled with concentration camp survivors... and so much more.

I'm sure that for WWII historians, this novel doesn't even begin to tell the story, but for someone who doesn't know much about this time period, books like this spark an interest that carries one forward into more and more meaningful study (perhaps, more of Nigh Soldiers first; then, later, a popular history book, and eventually, maybe even some academic ones, with bits and pieces gathered along the way from the "world wide web" of information). It's like a pebble, that once striking the water, forms ever larger concentric circles that emanate out from the original point of contact.

The book isn't perfect (the ending is unnecessarily Hollywood, the main character's personality doesn't really come through, a few times, the language borders on the inane), but overall, I learned so much and was so believably transported to WWII France/Italy/Germany, that I am overlooking these points, and very much look forward to the rest of this series.