The World at Night

Night Soldiers #4

by Alan Furst

Paris, 1940. The civilized, upper-class life of film producer Jean Casson is derailed by the German occupation of Paris, but Casson learns that with enough money, compromise, and connections, one need not deny oneself the pleasures of Parisian life. Somewhere inside Casson, though, is a stubborn romantic streak. When he’s offered the chance to take part in an operation of the British secret service, this idealism gives him the courage to say yes. A simple mission, but it goes wrong, and Casson realizes he must gamble everything—his career, the woman he loves, life itself. Here is a brilliant re-creation of France—its spirit in the moment of defeat, its valor in the moment of rebirth.

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

268 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 1996

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

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars. I like this author's spy books. This one is set in France, from May, 1940 to June 1941. Jean Casson is a French filmmaker. He puts films together, recruiting scriptwriters, actors, directors, and financing. This book starts out slow, showing Jean as an ordinary man, drawn into extraordinary actions by the war. Before the war, he led a pleasurable life of short term love affairs and an amicable relationship with his wife who he has been separated from for several years.
But then people come to him and ask him to do something against the Germans. He reluctantly agrees. The author does well in describing France during occupation.
Two quotes: "War with Germany, he thought, it doesn't stop. They'd lost in 1870, won-barely- in 1918 and now they had to do it again. A nightmare: an enemy attacks, you beat him, still he attacks.. You surrender, still he attacks. Casson's stomach twisted, he wanted to cry, or to fight, it was the same feeling."
Paris: "At twilight the city throbbed with life, crowds moving along the avenue, the smells of garlic and frying oil and cologne and Gauloises and the chestnut blossom on the spring breeze all blended together."
I read this library book in 2 days.

[Dante · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Alan Furst; I've read all and enjoyed of his 1940's era books -- most of them several times. Except this one.

To me, Furst's novels have three great strengths. 1: Atmosphere -- an ability to transport the reader back to the smokey, uncertain times as WWII was getting started; 2: Great and believable characters -- people who are like those around you who happened to find themselves in compelling circumstances; and 3: Plausibility; unlike most "spy novels," Furst's do not contain supermen, answers to problems don't fall out of the sky, smart people do smart things, some of which don't work.

This one manages to miss on all three. He doesn't really hit on the atmosphere of the time; I can't say exactly why. His characters are not terribly interesting or sympathetic (although the Jean Casson returns in a later book as a much better character); and worst of all, this book illustrates many of the bad spy novel traits that his other books manage to avoid. Smart people do stupid things; spies confide in absolute strangers; people just happen to stumble on the hidden/lost things they were looking for; the hero has fabulous sex with a different woman each night.

I guess this is where Furst learned what NOT to put in a spy novel.

Read the others by Furst -- ALL of the others. Skip this one.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's what you should listen to while reading this review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slHjk...

If you scratch at the gold of Furst's evocative books, some of the plating inevitably flakes off... on nearly every page, alas.

And if you knock here and there to sound the depths of his imagination and the depths of insight, one finds tinny, hollow sounds here and there. Perhaps more than 'here and there'.

And so, it is not without cause...that many readers write Furst off as little more than a literary hack.

Yes, perhaps. Who could argue.

And yet..., reading him is much like sitting in the living room of your fancy U.S. apartment, watching Saving Private Ryan, listening to Edith Piaf on your smooth hi-fi, a cognac on the table... while flipping through a large volume of the photos of Brassäi. And it is not unappealing.

There is little plot in Furst's novels, something he talks about, in fact, in this book:
"Yet, a mystery. Hotel Dorado [a script that Jean Casson is producing] was luminous. Not in the plot -- somewhere in deepest Fischfang-land there was no real belief in plot. Life wasn't this, and therefore that, and so, of course, the other. It didn't work that way. Life was this, and then something, and then something else, and then a kick in the ass from nowhere...."

( -- and there, in that last, sad cola, is the flaking, alas... of the gold plating....).

But there is mood in Furst -- and for those who are fascinating by the period -- that mood is wonderfully sustained. And there is also character. Furst's leading characters -- like the Polish officer, and Jean Casson in this novel, are very appealing men...handsome, intelligent, humble, moral, but not simplistically so... attractive to women and to men both... -- and much the same can be said for many of his other characters... they are marvelously well drawn and vivid. And quite individual. Essentially good men and women, most of them.... Trying to survive in a world of moral ambiguities.

Even the Nazis...
"They chatted for a time, nothing all that important, a conversation among men of the world, no fools, long past idealism. Poor Europe, decadent and weak, very nearly gobbled up by the Bolshevik monster. But for them. Not said, but clearly understood..." (231)

The prose is often lovely -- though always with that final undertaste of lead...

In both senses of that word, of that metal... For it is lead that underlies the golden sheen, and lead that defines the moment... Europe at war...

And then, of course, there is that train... from Paris to Barcelona, via Lyons and Port Bou -- resonant Port Bou...! -- which I myself took at the age of 17 -- and that suitcase -- I have an exact replica of it! -- cobbled tan, with green and red stripes.... So this is a book I'd have to love...!

Anyway -- for those who like Furst (as I do, for all his flaws), this is one of his best.

(rating always relative only to genre, of course...)

[Patrick Sherriff · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was a slow build-up and the novel didn't really catch fire for me until the final third, but that is maybe as it should be. What Furst has created is an evocative exploration of what it was like to lose your country, way of life and future and then to have to continue living. It's an intelligent novel with authentic detail, moments of humour and terror, and a sting in the tail. In these dark Trumpian days it's instructive to see how people of an earlier age dealt with an even greater affront to civilisation. My first Furst but not my last.

Download my starter library for free here - http://eepurl.com/bFkt0X - and receive my monthly newsletter with book recommendations galore for the Japanophile/crime fiction/English teacher in all of us.

[T. Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read all of Furst's WWII books. These aren't action novels. They are atmospheric and very evocative. In some ways, they are all the same book and the same main character, but I don't that isn't necessarily a criticism. This is one of the best of the bunch. The desperation, fear, and apathy that war brings with it are always prevalent, and part of what make the books so good.

[Alex Cantone · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the radio, the BBC. A quintet, swing guitar, violin-maybe Stephane Grapelli - a female vocalist, voice rough with static. The volume had to be very low: radios were supposed to be turned over to the Germans, and Casson loved the thing, couldn’t bear to part with it. It glowed in the dark and played music - he sometimes thought of it as the last small engine of civilization, a magic device, and he was its keeper, the hermit who hid the sacred ring.

The World at Night opens in Paris, June 1940. Film producer Jean Casson is bedding his latest amour as the radio informs the nation that the Germans have rolled through Belgium and are at the border. In true Parisian style, Casson is invited to a dinner party held by his ex-wife, her new beau, her sister and close friends as their comfortable middle-class existence in the 16th Arrondissement begins to unravel.

A blackout was in effect, and the velvety darkness of the Passy Streets was strange but not unpleasant-as though the neighborhood had gone back a hundred years in time. In some apartments there were candles, but that was typical French confusion at work: a blackout didn’t mean you had to cover the light in your windows, it meant you couldn’t turn on the electricity.

At first Casson is little affected, working with Jewish playwright Fischfang on a new romantic film "Hotel Dorado” - discussing locations and funding with the German Hugo Altmann, working for the Continental Film Studio, who takes him to lunch.

A town fell away. And they were in the countryside. Corot, Pissarro, they’d all painted up here. Autumn valleys, soft light, white clouds that rolled down from Normandy and lit up the sky.

We follow Casson for a year, stretched over 9 episodes, as he drifts through the days with his contacts (and afternoons/nights with women). A brief stab at making newsreels of the French forces before the army is routed, making his way back to Paris and to a former lover, the actress Citrine. While waiting in a food line a loud voice asks about a rumour of a British advance and Citrine stops him in time.

Nobody on the line spoke, they waited, in their own worlds. On the way home to rue Chardin, Citrine said, “You must be born yesterday. Don’t you know there are informers on the food lines? They get money for each radio the Germans find, they only have to persuade some fool to say he heard the news on the BBC…come down from the clouds."

Author Alan Furst excels at the Nazi-era spy novel, weaving his stories with eloquent phrasing that remind me of an artist’s brush-strokes on canvas. A romantic – Casson is beguiled by a profiteer, only to become a stooge for both the Gestapo and the resistance, backed by British Intelligence.

This is the fourth of the Night Soldiers series of novels I have read – each complete in itself – and after the suspense of The Polish Officer I found the main character here unappealingly naïve – the plot seemingly locked into Sod’s Law (UK) / Murphy’s Law (US) where anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Then I realized the author’s genius – Casson makes everyone around him look good. Among the unsung heroes, a French policeman at a German checkpoint, waving their vehicle through, and 19-year-old André – a passeur – with his dog, guiding Casson across the border between “occupied” and Vichy France.

Casson thought, dogs understand war, its memory lived in them, and this one’s traditional business was herding stock to safety. A small cold wind, just enough to lift the soft hair on the dog’s neck, made Casson shiver. He’d been offered an oilskin, hanging amid shotguns and fishing baskets and rubber boots in the gunroom of the chateau, but he had declined. Well next time he’d know better…

(The next time?) Then there is the redoubtable baroness in the Paris apartment below his: by seducing a German officer and allowing herself to be spanked, coal is delivered to the building during the coldest winter in a hundred years. But it is Furst’s landscapes that speak volumes for me. On the escape route to Honfleur:

At dusk, they said he could take the air for a half-hour. He was happy for that, sat on the sagging dock and watched birds flying over the river. There was a mackerel sky just before dark, the last red of the sun lighting the clouds, then a dark, starless evening, and a breeze rustled in the leaves of the willow trees that grew on the river bank.

And the unforgettable atmosphere of a nightclub. All around them, a sea of faces, the world at night – desire and cunning, love and greed, the usual. A Brueghel of Paris in the second spring of the war.

Verdict: more for lovers of literature than spy fiction – little in the way of action and no clever devices.

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

Furst's fourth Night Soldiers' novel switches narrators to Jean Casson, a French movie producer. He is a reluctant hero who is drawn into the secret war against the Nazi occupiers of France. With 'The World at Night', Furst is able to again relate the way WWII impacted typical Europeans in ways that most fiction and nonfiction writers who focus on Europe's second world war seem to often miss or overlook.

A solid Furst novel, just not a great one. But take that with a grain of salt. Minor Furst novels (like le Carre) are often miles better than 9/10 of the historical spy fiction out there.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admired how well this novel was put together: first, our protagonist (and everyone else in France) is simply trying to carry on with his career as a filmmaker and adjusting to the German occupation, then he’s slowly drawn into a very dangerous Allied intelligence operation. There are also his serial romantic attachments to deal with.
Slowly, then quickly, events come to a harrowing conclusion. How much risk will he take to find what matters most?

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can always get lost in a novel by Alan Furst. The good kind of lost where you forget about passing time, missed train stops, your plan to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

In The World at Night, a French film producer finds his life, along with everyone else’s lives, upended by the German invasion of Poland and the sudden conquest of France. Jean Casson, in his early 40s, is mobilized to his astonishment and attached not unreasonably to a film crew, but France is defeated before his unit gets to do much than drive toward the collapsing front. Before long he is back in Paris trying to locate a normal life within occupied France. A Jewish screenwriter who is also a communist continues to write scripts for Casson while moving from house to house, woman to woman. The lover of Casson’s ex-wife becomes something very like a collaborator, as does another friend. A business acquaintance involves him in an intrigue meant to be Casson’s bit to aid the Resistance but it goes wrong and leads to both the British and the Germans suspecting him even as they recruit him as an agent.

Into the mix is the re-kindled flames of a former romance, complicating the highly shadowed and deeply uncertain world Casson lives in. As always the dialogue is sharp, disciplined and real. The atmosphere redolent of another time and place that conjures familiarity where none exists. Some of it is done by such Furst touchstones as the Brasserie Heininger, the Rick’s Café American of Paris, where the hero of any Furst novels ends up for at least one meal, but mostly it’s done with great writing, great research, and a great eye and ear for character and moments. The World at Night is a very satisfying read.

[John Warner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jean Casson is a hedonist, a self-indulgent pleasure seeker, who loves life, especially Parisian life, parties, good food and drink, and women, primarily those he frequently beds. He is a modestly successful film producer in the 1930's Paris coordinating international resources for a film's inception, production, and post-production. He hopes for one blockbuster which will assure his fame, especially if it stars Citrine, a young and beautiful French actress. However, his plans go awry when the German blitzkreig occurs in 1940. Casson is also patriotic; therefore, he vows not to make any films for the Germans. Still interested in producing his great film, he must do his job while navigating issues surrounding German occupation including seizure of personal property, rationing, and restriction of movement. His patriotism, especially for Paris, and film connections soon make him a target for those interested in French Resistance and he finds himself a willing participant in clandestine operations.

Initially, the protagonist seems to be drifting through life; however, when he becomes an asset to other countries seeking to aid the French Resistance, it transitions into a typical rat-in-the-maze story with Casson trying to remain one step ahead of the German authorities. Paris also becomes a character in this book, many of the scenes taking place in the city's shadows and smoke-filled rooms. I did enjoy witnessing the transition of Casson from being primarily a libertine to his romance of Citrine. The major problem I had with this novel is the plot, which I found meandering or confusing at times. I did believe that the tale was a realistic depiction of the German-occupied France

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me say right off that this installment, #4 in the series, is really a prequel to #5, Red Gold. I read them in the reverse order. Although I think it did not entirely spoil my own reading, it would have been better had I recognized the duology. That said, I think the two books should have been published as one volume. This, The World at Night, could have had as much as 100-150 pages cut from it in doing so.

The book opens on the day Germany invaded France, 9 May 1940. The book proceeds chronologically and dates are often provided. I wanted less background on how Paris deteriorated under the German occupation and more espionage because that is why I'm reading this series. I want these thrillers to be thrillerish and that didn't happen until the last 75 pages or so. In all fairness, though, the last 75 pages are very nearly worth reading about Casson getting more and more restricted under the occupation.

Despite the above complaint, taken as a whole this series is worth every page. I have neglected it and am glad I revisited these two volumes recently. Not every book is worth 4- or 5-stars and this doesn't reach to that level. In fact, it is a rather weak 3-stars, but reading it will make the next in the series more than worth the time. I don't think the entire series needs to be read in order, but these should be.

[Jan Rice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am glad I read Night Soldiers first. This one struck me as much more ordinary. It was so long before anything happened. And that narrator, George Guidall, with his whispery, insinuating voice, is not right for a World War II spy story. (Moreover, Guidall narrated a Daniel Silva thriller I listened to, so hearing him again reminded me of a book I'd just as soon forget.) But it comes back to The World at Night: if more had been happening, I would have been less distractible. I had bought The World at Night on sale at Audible, so maybe you could say I got what I paid for. But on the other hand if they want to sell more Alan Furst, they should have offered a bargain on one of the better ones. The book isn't badly written; it's just that the author sets the stage for nearly half of the book, or I guess this book is itself setting the stage for more Jean Casson adventures to come. Nor was the book startling or revelatory or funny. Finally, at the end, it became exciting and while that doesn't redeem the experience of this book it does help.

[Duffy Pratt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always like Furst's books. To a certain extent, they are all similar. A conflicted man, with some noble underpinnings gets drawn over his head into a world of intrigue that he only vaguely understands it. This time its a minor film producer just after the occupation. Furst has a wonderful way of making spying seem simultaneously noble and mundane, even a bit tawdry. For most of the book, its not quite clear whether Casson is a spy. He seems to have mixed views on the subject. But both the British and the Germans are determined to make him a spy, and he is left with little choice in the matter. What is clear is that little, or none, of his spying has any impact on any great events. The largest impacts they have are on Casson's love life, and his chance of survival. As always, the atmosphere is good, the characters interesting, the plotting slow but engaging. I especially like the part of the book that involved a purported plot to assassinate Franco. And as always, I'm left knowing that I will read more by him, but not feeling in any particular rush to do so.

[Deanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Terrifically atmospheric and sometimes cinematic. History is generously, credibly drawn across the pages.

This spy novel is not as heroic or compelling as is typical for the genre, but is perhaps more realistic.

But the women felt like throw-away placements more than characters, and so represented wasted opportunities for characters or relationships to be I vested in. The romantic focus wasn’t convincing or interesting, and as such added little to the book despite taking up a surprising amount of attention.

I’m finding I appreciate Furst for place and time experiences that linger, but not as much for story.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven’t read Furst before, and picked this up because it was on sale. Narration is good, but at some points you keep waiting for something to happen. Eventually you start to care about the characters, but the second half of the book is better than the first.


Crossposted at Booklikes.

[Pamela Shropshire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can’t quite decide whether to rate this book as a 2 or 3. I’m leaning more toward 2. Generally I read genre novels for the characters and the settings (place and time period) and how well the author evokes the atmosphere.

Our protagonist here is 40-ish Jean-Claude Casson, a filmmaker in 1930s Paris. We are given page after page of his inner thoughts, most of which concern which woman he is going to have sex with that night. He is neither good enough to be likeable nor evil enough to be interesting - he is merely blah. And he doesn’t even become a spy until very late in the book and he is a dismal failure. If any fictional spy deserves to be caught and tortured by the Gestapo, Jean-Claude is the one.

There are some interesting secondary characters, which are really the main reason I kept reading to the end — that, and I kept hoping the book would pick up once we got to the spy stuff. But I was wrong. Particularly disappointing after book 3 about the dashing Polish officer, Alexander de Milja.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A swathe of sex scenes interspersed by ineffectual spying.

[Harold · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the front of the book there was a short section containing professional reviews. One of the reviewers made the same observation I've noted in my review of an earlier Alan Furst book. Furst is an expert in capturing the feel of pre and early WWII. I was born the year after the war ended so I really don't know first hand what that feel is, but to me, and the professional reviewers, it is the atmosphere one gets when watching movies such as Casablanca, 13 Rue Madeleine or The House On 92nd Street etc. Eric Ambler evokes the same thing, but his books were written in that period.
The story is set mostly in Paris and begins about a month before the German occupation and progresses into that period. The protagonist is a French film producer who gets drawn into espionage without really wanting to or meaning to. He has few choices in how things transpire. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will be reading both Furst and Ambler more.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smart comfort food for those who like spy novels grounded in far more realism than Robert Ludlum, though less than John LeCarre. Each Furst novel looks at a small segment of either the run up to World War II or the conflict itself. The World at Night is set during the period between the attack on France in 1940 and the end of 1941, just before the United States enters the war. It follows film maker Jean Casson through as series of haphazard adventures (including a trip to Franco's Spain and another to Vichy France) as he drifts into possible Resistance work. Nothing much really comes of that, aside from meetings with interesting, well-drawn characters. The real focus is upon his star-crossed relationship with a former lover, Citrine, whom he wishes to use in a movie he is trying to produce during the Occupation. A further complication is that the movie has been surreptitiously written by a Russian Jew. Casson interacts with francophile German officers who want him to spy on the Resistance, upper class friends who become semi-collaborationists and others who behave surprisingly well when the chips are down. Which they are by the end of the book, as Casson and Citrine desperately attempt to be together until the Gestapo interferes. As usual with Furst, everything is resolved satisfactorily, as Nero Wolfe would say. The World at Night is a bit darker than other novels by Furst, but it has the usual rewards.

[Andie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Furst is simply the best writer of thrillers around today. His heroes are are mature, world weary men about town who have no ambitions to be heroes, but have a sense of honor that nonetheless propels them onto the heroic path.

In this volume, Jean Claude Casson, a Parisian film producer struggles to come to terms with life under the German occupation during World War II. He sees people all around him collaborating, but just cannot make himself cozy up to the Nazis. He tries a little espionage on behalf of the English, but finds that that doesn't suit him either.

But it's hard to stay neutral in occupied Paris. The Germans hear about his flirtation with espionage and then start pressuring him to play the game by their rules, and Jean Claude must make a desperate run towards Unoccupied France and then to Spain. This one kept me madly turning the pages until the last page.

[Jacki (Julia Flyte) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alan Furst has written fourteen books (soon to be fifteen) set in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. They form the "Night Soldiers" series and they are loosely connected but can be read in any order. "The World At Night" focuses on Jean Casson, a film producer living in Paris. When the Germans arrive in 1940, he is living a very comfortable life: his career is going well, he has a good relationship with his ex-wife and an endless stream of women willing to share his bed. Gradually things change under the Germans. There are constraints on his work. His brief, enforced military service comes back to bite him. He is grudgingly enlisted to work for Intelligence services which brings ongoing stresses as he realises that he is under close surveillance. He falls in love with an actress but he lives in the Vichy zone, so getting to see her brings its own dangers and complications.

What this book does extremely well is capturing a sense of what it would be like to live in Paris under German Occupation. Alan Furst's books don't tend to follow traditional plots. Rather we follow people who are living their lives and as most life is, there are lulls of inactivity interspersed with moments of intensity. Sometimes when you're reading one of his books you wonder where it's going and clock off, then something happens that references a person 100 pages back and you realise the importance of paying attention. When you finish it, you feel like you've been immersed in that time and place and that's a very satisfying way to feel.

[Brian Vizek · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable book. I think this is my 4th Alan Furst book and probably the most enjoyable one for me.

The book is set in France, primarily Paris. The date is May 10th 1940 so Germany has taken over Poland, but hasn’t invade France or the Low Countries yet.

The main character in the book is Jean Casson he puts together movies. He is a very interesting character. Eventually German invades and Jean gets pulled into the army, part of a film crew for the army.

France doesn’t last long and the book moves to a phase Jean trying to live his life in German occupied France. There are people who are interested in making movies and Jean becomes involved in putting a movie together at the same time Jean is approached to help the resistance.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very French story, a Parisian story, a Frenchman's story. The loose societal and moral restraints of the French population, once under German control, became easy footholds for intrigues of many kinds. Our protagonist finds himself falling into such a complicated web after trying to make a go of it as a film producer with outstanding connections. That may be the downfall of this novel, though it is still enjoyable and obviously well-written. The protagonist never seems to be in control of his own story. He is passive and reactive. His idealism and romanticism do eventually manifest themselves as heroism, but for too much of the story he is being manipulated across a board. I hear the next story is essentially a direct sequel to this one, so I hope--and assume--he may find some redemption. It's still Furst and the writing possesses much of his most admirable qualities as an author and crafter of tales.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't usually read spy novels, but this is the second Alan Furst I've read. His writing provides just enough detail to pull me in. The only way I can describe it is 'spare', though that doesn't do it justice. Despite the WWII setting, which I seem to read so much of, Furst provides a different context and a novel I couldn't put down.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not the best Alan Furst novel but, as with them all, it's an extremely atmospheric novel set in Paris during the early occupation. The main character is a small time film producer and the novel takes place in his world and focuses on his, more or less incompetent, efforts to join and aid the resistance and to avoid the Nazi authorities in Paris. As with all of Alan Furst's novels it is an excellent work of escapism that takes you out of the everyday world and puts you into a very detailed world of adventure and intrigue.

[Rachel Pollock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, but this was so gratifying.

A superficial but good-natured rake of a film producer gets sucked into WW2 espionage in occupied France. Dire danger, narrow escapes, sexcapades, and doomed lovers.

More please.

[Maria Carmo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The description of Paris during the occupation is very accurate and creates it's own type of atmosphere. The central character comes alive in full dimension.
Definitely worth reading.

Maria Carmo,

Lisbon, 21 10 2021

[Jason Kratz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fourth book in the "Night Soldiers" series of World War II-era spy novels by Alan Furst evokes the feeling of what I assume is close to how it felt to live in Paris in 1940 under German occupation. Furst is a master of description and detail and with this book that is evident as ever. But is the book good? Can description and feeling be enough to carry a novel?

Set almost exclusively in Paris in 1940, in the time leading up to, and during, German occupation the book tells the story of French filmmaker Jean Casson. Let's get out of the way quickly the discussion about Furst's technical skill when it comes to creating atmosphere. Reading his books I can almost feel the streets beneath my feet and the smoke hanging over a crowded Paris nightclub. The details are not to be missed:

"A cast of characters well beyond Jean Renoir. Adèle, the niece from Amboise. Real nobility- look at those awful teeth. Washed-out blue eyes gazed into his, a tiny pulse beat sparrowlike at the pale temple."

The man knows how to paint a picture in your mind.

The problem is it can't carry a book. Unlike "The Polish Officer" there just isn't much story here. The character of Casson is likable enough. The other characters are also well written. The problem here is that we're always waiting for something to happen. I understand that he's trying to show the uncertainty of what was going to happen. The Germans had ran through Poland and even though there were indications that a treaty would be signed there was a huge amount of uncertainty of what Hitler was planning to do. Of course we know now that even while there were hopes of French acquiescence Hitler was also planning an invasion. The book is mostly effective showing this uncertainty but I can only take the scenes of parties and sexual encounters so much. These are supposed to be spy novels but there isn't much spying going on.

I also understand that Furst is trying to show that common people can do extraordinary things in extraordinary circumstances. But what we see is Casson bumbling through encounters, being played by various sides. The problem here is that if I wanted normal I wouldn't be reading a spy novel set in World War II. I don't want ordinary characters. I want characters that are going to shoot first and ask questions later. Historical fiction or not reading a spy novel I want some action with my parties and sex.

The story flows as such, it just isn't flowing very fast. The previous novel, The Polish Officer, was quickly paced and there as a lot going on as we followed, Captain Alexander de Milja's exploits following the fall of Warsaw, and Poland, to German forces. The book covered a lot of territory; not quite as much territory as Night Soldiers but it also didn't exhibit any of the problems that book had with story flow. We have none of that with The World At Night.

What we do have is a moderately enjoyable read solely due to Furst's ability to create a lush atmosphere in which to place his characters. World War II certainly wasn't lacking in story lines which is why it is so difficult to understand why this novel moved so slowly. All that being said I did enjoy the book but after reading 4 of the Night Soldiers novels I'm getting to the point where it's clear that I'm not going to get much variety. I hope, with more novels to go, that I'm wrong but so far these stories have become pretty predictable.

[Ioana · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up. Not one of Furst's best, but still a brilliantly bleak and realistic portrayal of life under Nazi occupation in France during WW2. Still learned more from this novel than I ever did in a history class, and as with other books by Furst, I was still compelled to look up every detail while my interest in the time period increased exponentially. And, as always, Furst' characterizations are incredible: many times I was compelled to pause and consider, "what if that had been me?" What does one do in a situation in which one is confronted with no good choices? In which one's decision is between betraying friends, family, and country, or being sent to a Nazi camp? In which one has to lie and embellish as a matter of course? What I love about Furst is that he does not sensationalize, his characters are not supermen, and the game is not a simple binary one of virtue vs. vice, evil vs. goodness. The world he portrays is messy, complicated, filled with people with competing and complex desires, needs, and values.

Now, my beef with this particular novel is twofold:
1. About 1/3 of the book is written in sentence fragments. Furst does this in his other books, too, but it's less jarring when it only occurs at the beginning of each chapter/section. Now, some literary writers can get away with unique stylistic quirks, but Furst' writing is not so poetic in nature that it can pull of fragments successfully... The World at Night was really getting on my nerves by the end--if I had not known Furst for the amazing author he can be, I probably would have quit at some point before reaching the end for this reason.

2. The story is just so mushy-gushy and makes a lot less sense than the others in the series. In the middle of war, occupation, life-and-death situations, etc, all our main guy can think about is being with his girl. I read these for the WW2 portrayal, and not for the Harlequin-esque aspects. Now while I do appreciate that war tore loved ones apart and romantic love suffered as a consequence, and since this can be an important aspect overlooked in "research" or academics of the period--a novel or two about romantic love in the occupation is fine. But I am not appreciating that each and every single one of Furst' books in this series seem to eventually spiral around a love-story. Yes, romantic love is important, but it's not everything, and I'd be much more interested in other aspects of life during WW2 than lovers torn apart by fate and by stupidity or by unexplained plot twists (WHY oh why did the girl, Citrine, go to Lyons, in the unoccupied zone? We are never told, it seems just an artificial way to separate the lovers and to create a plot/tension...)

[Kenyon Harbison · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel is about the tribulations of a French film producer, Jean Casson, during the German occupation of Paris. It is a "spy novel" in the loose sense of the term, as are all of Alan Furst's novels that I have read so far. This is not the silly Robert Ludlum type of spy novel, in other words. You truly can FEEL Paris during the occupation. Where a Ludlum or (these days) a Patterson gives you a clunky, dropped-in sentence of superficial "color," which, if you have half a brain in your head, you feel sure his assistant dug up on Google in two minutes of research, Furst gives you a whole world of both emotional and physical detail, a world that is the result of painstaking research into primary sources.

Furst novels are not about plot. The hero always survives, so in that sense they are genre-complying. But other than that, they meander, they dip, they back-track. Here, for example [plot spoiler, note], Casson goes on his first spying mission after he is recruited, but it turns out it was not a spy mission at all -- he was simply the patsy of a wartime profiteer seeking to steal money from British intelligence. And yet, Casson becomes a spy. This sort of thing almost always works. (Imagine The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, but a spy novel set in Paris, and not nearly so boring as that "classic" is.)

Where it doesn't work here is in Casson's relationship to Citrine, a young interracial actress. Casson is a great character, and totally believable. But here is a philandering forty-year-old, and suddenly he is in love with an old fling, and you never really understand why. And really her character is so sketchily drawn that you REALLY never know why she is in love with him. Oh sure there is an Occupation, people seek comfort, young girls seek security, but it's not meant to be about that; Furst really means you to think they are in love. It just doesn't work. Not enough basis for the love. Furst tries to get you to buy it with some poetic language, but in the end the relationship with Citrine "fails" as a writerly endeavor for the inverse of reason Furst's description of Occupied Paris succeeds: a dirth of facts.


Furst's attempt to buy your belief in their love with 'poetic' writing highlights another error he makes, which is that he gets a bit too mannered with his prose sometimes, trying to evoke too much meaning by using too many deliberately incomplete sentences, that sort of thing. But these are minor quibbles. The guy is an amazing writer, and this is another hugely entertaining and fast-reading novel that nonetheless feels weighty and important.