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Night Soldiers #2
Dark Star
Paris, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague, 1937. In the back alleys of nighttime Europe, war is already under way. André Szara, survivor of the Polish pogroms and the Russian civil wars and a foreign correspondent for Pravda, is co-opted by the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and becomes a full-time spymaster in Paris. As deputy director of a Paris network, Szara finds his own star rising when he recruits an agent in Berlin who can supply crucial information. Dark Star captures not only the intrigue and danger of clandestine life but the day-to-day reality of what Soviet operatives call special work.
390 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 28, 1991
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3523 people want to read
About the author
Alan Furst
38 books1,557 followersAlan 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 463 reviews
February 9, 2009
Alan Furst is better than John Le Carre. There I've said it.
Since I started the series, I've been living in 1939, wearing my rain coat and I'm thinking of sewing my passport into the lining of my briefcase. Is that too obvious?
It's true what everyone says about Furst. You're suddenly and shockingly plunged into this period in history. You'll learn to care deeply about all those eastern bloc countries that you barely know. You'll learn how to survive as a Russian agent in Paris.
This is an amazing series.
Since I started the series, I've been living in 1939, wearing my rain coat and I'm thinking of sewing my passport into the lining of my briefcase. Is that too obvious?
It's true what everyone says about Furst. You're suddenly and shockingly plunged into this period in history. You'll learn to care deeply about all those eastern bloc countries that you barely know. You'll learn how to survive as a Russian agent in Paris.
This is an amazing series.
May 11, 2011
I learned more about Stalin and World War II from this book than I ever learned from any history class.
Andre Szara is a respected Russian journalist working for Pravda, occasionally doing a little favor for the State, when suddenly, he finds himself involved in a political killing. He is handed a luggage ticket retrieved from the body, and directed to redeem a piece of luggage stowed away in a Prague train station. Under a false bottom in an old suitcase, he finds a case file, detailing a mysterious sombody’s years of snitch work for the Okhrana, the Tzar's secret police. The somebody turns out to be Stalin himself. An underground force within Soviet intelligence wants Szara to write the story, exposing the Soviet leader's traitorous criminal background--essentially, asking Szara to commit suicide. And then, history convulses, priorities change, and Stalin is needed to lead the fight against Hitler.
A survivor of pogroms, the Russian Pale, and Stalin's purges, Szara is wry and witty, dashing and romantic, cynical and softhearted. I’ve read all of Mr. Furst’s books, and Szara is the most solidly real of all his heroes. You bob your head along with his observations, you ache when he aches, you fear for his life. You understand what it feels like to lose all hope, and what it means to fall in love, when you thought there was nothing left inside of you.
With the effortless grace of his language, his amazing grasp of history, and an astounding vocabulary of period detail, Furst conjures it all to quivering life. When you read this book, you will know how it feels to be hunted by the NKVD, what it is like to be a Jew in Berlin on Kristallnacht, how to react if a Gestapo officer leans over to look at you, and of course, how to run an agent. You will feel those German warplanes roar down over your head before they drop their payloads. You are in that line of Polish refugees, trudging away from both sides as fast as you can. It’s you, waiting with increasing desperation for some country, any country, to give you a visa so that you can get away from bad people who want to kill you. Most effectively, he recreates what it must have felt like to be a Jew in an increasingly unfriendly world.
I love all of Alan Furst's books. But Dark Star is my favorite.
Andre Szara is a respected Russian journalist working for Pravda, occasionally doing a little favor for the State, when suddenly, he finds himself involved in a political killing. He is handed a luggage ticket retrieved from the body, and directed to redeem a piece of luggage stowed away in a Prague train station. Under a false bottom in an old suitcase, he finds a case file, detailing a mysterious sombody’s years of snitch work for the Okhrana, the Tzar's secret police. The somebody turns out to be Stalin himself. An underground force within Soviet intelligence wants Szara to write the story, exposing the Soviet leader's traitorous criminal background--essentially, asking Szara to commit suicide. And then, history convulses, priorities change, and Stalin is needed to lead the fight against Hitler.
A survivor of pogroms, the Russian Pale, and Stalin's purges, Szara is wry and witty, dashing and romantic, cynical and softhearted. I’ve read all of Mr. Furst’s books, and Szara is the most solidly real of all his heroes. You bob your head along with his observations, you ache when he aches, you fear for his life. You understand what it feels like to lose all hope, and what it means to fall in love, when you thought there was nothing left inside of you.
With the effortless grace of his language, his amazing grasp of history, and an astounding vocabulary of period detail, Furst conjures it all to quivering life. When you read this book, you will know how it feels to be hunted by the NKVD, what it is like to be a Jew in Berlin on Kristallnacht, how to react if a Gestapo officer leans over to look at you, and of course, how to run an agent. You will feel those German warplanes roar down over your head before they drop their payloads. You are in that line of Polish refugees, trudging away from both sides as fast as you can. It’s you, waiting with increasing desperation for some country, any country, to give you a visa so that you can get away from bad people who want to kill you. Most effectively, he recreates what it must have felt like to be a Jew in an increasingly unfriendly world.
I love all of Alan Furst's books. But Dark Star is my favorite.
October 14, 2010
Sometime in the early 90s I was driving at night from Santa Fe to Albuquerque in a barrowed car (thanks again, Erika) listening to NPR. Their book reviewer of the moment -- Elvis Whatshisname, as I recall -- was laying extravagant praise on a spy novel, saying it broke the constraints of its genre, and blah blah blah. I stopped the car and made a note. Some weeks later, back in London where I was then living, I bought the book.
Now, I don't ordinarily read trash. Not because I am too good for it, but because I read so slowly that I feel that every moment spent on trash is a lost opportunity. But while I have to admit this was trash, it was, for lack of a better term, good trash. What made it different from one's basic run of the mill trash? For one thing, Mr Furst is clearly working hard, and he isn't one to say "good enough, Alan, on to the next bit." Quite frequently he writes like an angel -- for a sentence or a paragraph or several paragraphs, rarely more. It's enough. At least for me. I live for those "wow" moments, and am prepared to endure quite a number of "yada yada" moments between them. In a spy novel, Furst manages to include more than enough "wow" moments to keep me going.
In addition, there is his often remarked-upon skill at atmospherics. The smell of sulphurous coal smoke layered into a city for which war is both history and destiny. The tang of strong French cigarettes. The moist chill of a Central European evening. The not-quite-shine of shoes that have been repaired too many times, and soak through with salt water more than once. The mustiness of wet wool that hasn't been cleaned in a long while. The colour of a man poisoned by cyanide. Furst has an uncanny skill with details of this sort. He clearly has done his research -- and if he is not always correct about which model of car the Nazi or Soviet secret services drove in any given city at any given moment, so what? He's a writer of fiction not a quiz writer. IJn any case, for those obsessive compulsives there are more than enough websites on which to check which Einsatzgruppe was where when using what guns to kills which defenceless people.
I have read all of his books from Night Soldiers forward. Except for Dark Star, I have read them all in the order in which they were published. It is often remarked by my friends who have already read Furst (though rarely all of it), that he writes the same book over and over. So did Mark Twain. It's a legitimate complaint, but at the same time, it's beside the point. Most authors manage not to exhaust the things that worry them after the first book, and many keep writing that first book until they finally get it right. One might say that Jane Austen did this -- except she managed to get it right the first time and every time thereafter. Still, it can be difficult not to mix up the plots and characters of her books.
But in the case of Furst, I think he keep writing similar stories in very different ways. The Polish Officer, for example, is so fast paced and picaresque that the tiniest bit of skepticism will bring the whole thing crashing down.
And then there are the grand conceits that Furst allows himself in each book and sometimes across several books. If you aren't amused then I assume you aren't getting the jokes. As an example, in The Polish Office almost no one, including the officer in question, has a Polish name. As I live in Poland, I know how rare it is to encounter someone in this country who does not have a Polish name. De Milja? I don't think so. Vyborg? Not a chance. Perhaps Furst's editor or publisher told him to lose the unpronounceable Polish names. I don't care, it's still a hoot, albeit a subtile one.
Each book may tell a version of the same story, but none of them tells its version in exactly the same way as any of the others. Some books have next to no love interest. Others have the protagonist in bed with a woman or two, but in love with none. In still others, love interest seems the whole interest. Spies of Warsaw has more sex in it than the first few books put together -- even so, you get the feeling that Furst is practicing. Some books (like The Polish Officer) include so many events that one begins to think of the protagonist as a sort of composite character. Others (like Red Gold) move at a snails pace and go nowhere. As before, I am convinced this is not a failure, but a concious decission by the author to work one an aspect of his craft that he thinks needs work.
It's for that that I most often recommend Furst's books. They let you examine how a book is written, how the author adds meat, potatoes, vegetables, stock, herbs and spices to concoct the sort of stew that is a novel.
I gave this book 5 stars for it's transparency in terms of allowing an apprentice or journeyman writer to see how really good (and sometimes great) writing comes about. The reader can see how much work and what sort of wort goes into Furst's novels.
Now, I don't ordinarily read trash. Not because I am too good for it, but because I read so slowly that I feel that every moment spent on trash is a lost opportunity. But while I have to admit this was trash, it was, for lack of a better term, good trash. What made it different from one's basic run of the mill trash? For one thing, Mr Furst is clearly working hard, and he isn't one to say "good enough, Alan, on to the next bit." Quite frequently he writes like an angel -- for a sentence or a paragraph or several paragraphs, rarely more. It's enough. At least for me. I live for those "wow" moments, and am prepared to endure quite a number of "yada yada" moments between them. In a spy novel, Furst manages to include more than enough "wow" moments to keep me going.
In addition, there is his often remarked-upon skill at atmospherics. The smell of sulphurous coal smoke layered into a city for which war is both history and destiny. The tang of strong French cigarettes. The moist chill of a Central European evening. The not-quite-shine of shoes that have been repaired too many times, and soak through with salt water more than once. The mustiness of wet wool that hasn't been cleaned in a long while. The colour of a man poisoned by cyanide. Furst has an uncanny skill with details of this sort. He clearly has done his research -- and if he is not always correct about which model of car the Nazi or Soviet secret services drove in any given city at any given moment, so what? He's a writer of fiction not a quiz writer. IJn any case, for those obsessive compulsives there are more than enough websites on which to check which Einsatzgruppe was where when using what guns to kills which defenceless people.
I have read all of his books from Night Soldiers forward. Except for Dark Star, I have read them all in the order in which they were published. It is often remarked by my friends who have already read Furst (though rarely all of it), that he writes the same book over and over. So did Mark Twain. It's a legitimate complaint, but at the same time, it's beside the point. Most authors manage not to exhaust the things that worry them after the first book, and many keep writing that first book until they finally get it right. One might say that Jane Austen did this -- except she managed to get it right the first time and every time thereafter. Still, it can be difficult not to mix up the plots and characters of her books.
But in the case of Furst, I think he keep writing similar stories in very different ways. The Polish Officer, for example, is so fast paced and picaresque that the tiniest bit of skepticism will bring the whole thing crashing down.
And then there are the grand conceits that Furst allows himself in each book and sometimes across several books. If you aren't amused then I assume you aren't getting the jokes. As an example, in The Polish Office almost no one, including the officer in question, has a Polish name. As I live in Poland, I know how rare it is to encounter someone in this country who does not have a Polish name. De Milja? I don't think so. Vyborg? Not a chance. Perhaps Furst's editor or publisher told him to lose the unpronounceable Polish names. I don't care, it's still a hoot, albeit a subtile one.
Each book may tell a version of the same story, but none of them tells its version in exactly the same way as any of the others. Some books have next to no love interest. Others have the protagonist in bed with a woman or two, but in love with none. In still others, love interest seems the whole interest. Spies of Warsaw has more sex in it than the first few books put together -- even so, you get the feeling that Furst is practicing. Some books (like The Polish Officer) include so many events that one begins to think of the protagonist as a sort of composite character. Others (like Red Gold) move at a snails pace and go nowhere. As before, I am convinced this is not a failure, but a concious decission by the author to work one an aspect of his craft that he thinks needs work.
It's for that that I most often recommend Furst's books. They let you examine how a book is written, how the author adds meat, potatoes, vegetables, stock, herbs and spices to concoct the sort of stew that is a novel.
I gave this book 5 stars for it's transparency in terms of allowing an apprentice or journeyman writer to see how really good (and sometimes great) writing comes about. The reader can see how much work and what sort of wort goes into Furst's novels.
December 5, 2010
‘Dark Star’ is my favorite Furst 1930s spy novel so far (I’ve read seven from eleven). It’s the second, and finds Furst yet to completely settle into the formula which serves him so well in the most recent, ‘Spies of the Balkans.’
Like that novel, ‘Dark Star’ features a shopworn veteran of his profession, in this case Russian journalism, who takes up spying to survive, and becomes a reluctant hero of sorts. André Szara comes off the most concretely of any of Furst’s marvelous lead characters I've encountered, perhaps because he is so unprepossessing. You can smell this modest man’s sweat. He has the usual carnal dalliances Furst seems to feel obligated to throw into all his books, but with Szara, there’s a tangible sense of desperation.
And that’s because he’s a minor player in a big picture of highly desperate times. Kristallnacht marks Hitler’s open declaration of his mad manifesto, and the antisemitic thug who rules Russia might turn out to be the lesser evil, if he refrains from joining forces—Nazis and Communists together could have controlled the world. Not a good time to be an NKVD agent, nor a Jew, but Szara, moving warily from Paris to Berlin and through eastern Europe, has nothing else to be. He does the best he can to save his own life, then helps to save the lives of other Jews.
No one can better Furst in integrating history and adventure, and here he’s got a wholly exciting backdrop where he can move around the pawns of an unbelievably dark period. I learned about the vicious cartel from Georgia that brought Stalin to power. In the space of a few pages, I came to a real understanding of the Pale of Settlement. Furst passes along these nuggets of information without slowing down his story in the slightest.
Without sentimentality, and only inklings of the horrors borne by those dispersed people of the Pale, he also makes clear what it meant to be a Jew in Europe in 1938. ‘There is a trick,’ says a colleague of Szara’s, ‘played on us through the centuries and now played on us again: the Jew is accused of being cunning, by someone a thousand times more cunning than any Jew has ever been.’
If you can only read one Furst novel, this should be it. Highly recommended.
Like that novel, ‘Dark Star’ features a shopworn veteran of his profession, in this case Russian journalism, who takes up spying to survive, and becomes a reluctant hero of sorts. André Szara comes off the most concretely of any of Furst’s marvelous lead characters I've encountered, perhaps because he is so unprepossessing. You can smell this modest man’s sweat. He has the usual carnal dalliances Furst seems to feel obligated to throw into all his books, but with Szara, there’s a tangible sense of desperation.
And that’s because he’s a minor player in a big picture of highly desperate times. Kristallnacht marks Hitler’s open declaration of his mad manifesto, and the antisemitic thug who rules Russia might turn out to be the lesser evil, if he refrains from joining forces—Nazis and Communists together could have controlled the world. Not a good time to be an NKVD agent, nor a Jew, but Szara, moving warily from Paris to Berlin and through eastern Europe, has nothing else to be. He does the best he can to save his own life, then helps to save the lives of other Jews.
No one can better Furst in integrating history and adventure, and here he’s got a wholly exciting backdrop where he can move around the pawns of an unbelievably dark period. I learned about the vicious cartel from Georgia that brought Stalin to power. In the space of a few pages, I came to a real understanding of the Pale of Settlement. Furst passes along these nuggets of information without slowing down his story in the slightest.
Without sentimentality, and only inklings of the horrors borne by those dispersed people of the Pale, he also makes clear what it meant to be a Jew in Europe in 1938. ‘There is a trick,’ says a colleague of Szara’s, ‘played on us through the centuries and now played on us again: the Jew is accused of being cunning, by someone a thousand times more cunning than any Jew has ever been.’
If you can only read one Furst novel, this should be it. Highly recommended.
June 20, 2017
read long ago ... re-reading now in preparation to writing spy scenes in my sequel to A Flood of Evil
UPDATE 12/10/16 ... an excellent spy story that you "feel" as much as read. Changing currents, new alliances, set chapter by chapter against the evolving Nazi horror. Andre Szara, Jewish Polish Russian, struggling to stay alive but never stepping away from making a difference wherever he can. Fascinating moody portraits of Paris, Berlin and many other cities. I didn't follow every turn, but it doesn't matter. A wonderful read.
UPDATE 12/10/16 ... an excellent spy story that you "feel" as much as read. Changing currents, new alliances, set chapter by chapter against the evolving Nazi horror. Andre Szara, Jewish Polish Russian, struggling to stay alive but never stepping away from making a difference wherever he can. Fascinating moody portraits of Paris, Berlin and many other cities. I didn't follow every turn, but it doesn't matter. A wonderful read.
August 19, 2016
Furst captures the vibe - the atmosphere - of the era. I think many of us born right after the end of WWII all grew up watching the same movies, the same horrific documentaries, and reading the same books about the war. The intrigue, the romance, the danger, the heroism, the sacrifice portrayed in this media became an early part of out psyche and in a strange way places a book like this into a continuum with films like "Casablanca", "13 Rue Madeleine" and books like "The Mask of Dimitrius" and the non-fiction works of Ben Macintyre. Of course "Dark Star" is more dark, gritty and realistic than the films mentioned but what they have in common is the atmosphere of en era that they all manage to capture.
April 1, 2016
This is my second Alan Furst novel in the Night Soldiers series and, once again, he delivers. No one can equal him when it comes to creating the atmosphere of pre-WWII Europe. Add a cast of interesting characters, a plot with all the twist and turns you could want, and what you have is a very enjoyable read. If you’re interested in Europe before and during WWII, this will be like catnip. If what you want is a fast paced spy novel, you won’t be disappointed. The novels in this series each has a new set of characters so feel free to jump in anywhere along the way.
I read this as an audiobook. The narrator, George Guidall, was excellent.
I read this as an audiobook. The narrator, George Guidall, was excellent.
January 18, 2008
This book is a sure fire winner for anyone who enjoys truly compelling story set against a lushly detailed historical back drop.
Alan Furst really has an incredible talent for bringing history alive and this book is a fine example.
Generalities aside for the moment, I particularly enjoyed the Russian/Eastern European bent of this story. Our protagonist is a Polish born Russified Jew who begins the tale as a fiery, empassioned writer for Pravda but is slowly sucked into the ravening maw of the NKVD (Precursor to the KGB) as Hitler devours Europe and the region is sucked inexorably towards war.
The intensity and poignancy of this story make it a definite stand out. The all too up close and personal encounters with anti-antisemitism and life under Stalin's purges are just heartrending and left me unable to put this one down. Highly recommended.
Alan Furst really has an incredible talent for bringing history alive and this book is a fine example.
Generalities aside for the moment, I particularly enjoyed the Russian/Eastern European bent of this story. Our protagonist is a Polish born Russified Jew who begins the tale as a fiery, empassioned writer for Pravda but is slowly sucked into the ravening maw of the NKVD (Precursor to the KGB) as Hitler devours Europe and the region is sucked inexorably towards war.
The intensity and poignancy of this story make it a definite stand out. The all too up close and personal encounters with anti-antisemitism and life under Stalin's purges are just heartrending and left me unable to put this one down. Highly recommended.
October 19, 2015
Fabulous. Far, FAR better than The Polish Officer (which is formulaic). A book that was praised by Alan Bullock, reminiscent of Victor Serge; a piece of finely written, deeply felt WW II political-historical sleuthing...Szara is a very sympathetic character...this is a stand-alone novel, despite being part of a series, and the book to read of Furst's...
Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thoroughly enjoyed it.
June 3, 2018
A nicely crafted, at times lyrical, and periodically fascinating piece of historical (gentleman spy) fiction surrounding the Euro-Russian lead-up to World War II that ... alas ... didn't truly speak to me and never fully captured my attention. My sense is that I'm in the minority on this one. Ah, well.
It's an impressive piece of work - it just didn't move (or engage, or grab) me, nor did it hold my interest. On a more positive note, the slow rate of consumption meant that the book helped me pass time on nine (9) flights (total airtime exceeding 40 hours), with stops (either hotels or airports) in nine different countries. (OK, since I started this book, I finished three others and started another two ... but I stuck with it, and I can't say I'm sorry that I read it.) In other words, I've been carrying this book around for a long time, and it's literally been around the world in the process.
I see the attraction in covering - and I respect the author's efforts to include - such a wide range of events and characters, but, for me, it diluted the story's momentum, the driving force, the animating ... well, you get the idea.
I've had better luck with other Furst books in the Night Soldiers series (which, of course, isn't really a serial) - and, in comparison, they were published much later in his career, and (... and maybe this accounts for my reaction) were not only shorter (e.g., less dense), but far less ambitious in scope (or, in other words, far more limited or contained).
It's an impressive piece of work - it just didn't move (or engage, or grab) me, nor did it hold my interest. On a more positive note, the slow rate of consumption meant that the book helped me pass time on nine (9) flights (total airtime exceeding 40 hours), with stops (either hotels or airports) in nine different countries. (OK, since I started this book, I finished three others and started another two ... but I stuck with it, and I can't say I'm sorry that I read it.) In other words, I've been carrying this book around for a long time, and it's literally been around the world in the process.
I see the attraction in covering - and I respect the author's efforts to include - such a wide range of events and characters, but, for me, it diluted the story's momentum, the driving force, the animating ... well, you get the idea.
I've had better luck with other Furst books in the Night Soldiers series (which, of course, isn't really a serial) - and, in comparison, they were published much later in his career, and (... and maybe this accounts for my reaction) were not only shorter (e.g., less dense), but far less ambitious in scope (or, in other words, far more limited or contained).
December 12, 2014
This made for a challenging and interesting listening experience, due in part to the speed of the narration, which sent fact-filled text to my ears at a rapid clip. An American author, a book set mostly in Central Europe, therefore an English narrator. Somebody with a Slavic accent might have been preferable. But the narration is good overall - its brisk, steely tone was appropriate for the material.
Furst took me back, back to my ancestral history, back to Poland, Germany, and the 1930s. He is good at creating a Mittel-European noir mood, but his noir is not the noir of petty criminals, it is the noir cast by the shadow of the biggest, bloodiest conflict in history. Dim cafes, rain-swept streets, rusting soviet freighters, notes written in lemon juice, the Jewish question discussed over aperitifs as a piano plays Bartok in the background. The story follows Polish Jew Andre Szara, a protean Pravda journalist who finds himself unwillingly pulled into the world of espionage, where soviet spies conspire against each other as they keep an eye on the growing threat in Berlin. Mr. Szara has a series of adventures as he scurries around the continent: Belgium, Berlin, Paris, dodging bullets and changing identities and allegiances when necessary, working to save Jewish lives, spying on the Nazis, and trying to placate his masters in Moscow. But who is he working for anyway, and why? And who they are in conflict with? It is very murky stuff: tense and full of history.
Yes, Furst has clearly read his history books, and he makes sure to give the reader a welcome history lesson here and there. It is good to see the overview as our adaptable everyman struggles on one hook after another. He finds himself in Poland when the Stukas fly in, and after killing a KGB killer who is probably trying to kill him, he flees to Estonia, and then into Germany, where he is apprehended. The book ends with our hero in Switzerland, his German lover in his arms, and a special assignment for anti-fascist German general von Polanyi (who I think may have been a real individual involved in the famous plot to kill der fuehrer). All in all, very fine stuff, a classic WWII espionage thriller that ranks right up there with Le Carre and Greene and Ambler.
Furst took me back, back to my ancestral history, back to Poland, Germany, and the 1930s. He is good at creating a Mittel-European noir mood, but his noir is not the noir of petty criminals, it is the noir cast by the shadow of the biggest, bloodiest conflict in history. Dim cafes, rain-swept streets, rusting soviet freighters, notes written in lemon juice, the Jewish question discussed over aperitifs as a piano plays Bartok in the background. The story follows Polish Jew Andre Szara, a protean Pravda journalist who finds himself unwillingly pulled into the world of espionage, where soviet spies conspire against each other as they keep an eye on the growing threat in Berlin. Mr. Szara has a series of adventures as he scurries around the continent: Belgium, Berlin, Paris, dodging bullets and changing identities and allegiances when necessary, working to save Jewish lives, spying on the Nazis, and trying to placate his masters in Moscow. But who is he working for anyway, and why? And who they are in conflict with? It is very murky stuff: tense and full of history.
Yes, Furst has clearly read his history books, and he makes sure to give the reader a welcome history lesson here and there. It is good to see the overview as our adaptable everyman struggles on one hook after another. He finds himself in Poland when the Stukas fly in, and after killing a KGB killer who is probably trying to kill him, he flees to Estonia, and then into Germany, where he is apprehended. The book ends with our hero in Switzerland, his German lover in his arms, and a special assignment for anti-fascist German general von Polanyi (who I think may have been a real individual involved in the famous plot to kill der fuehrer). All in all, very fine stuff, a classic WWII espionage thriller that ranks right up there with Le Carre and Greene and Ambler.
July 25, 2014
Beautifully crafted, troubled, complex and “noir” to the core—Dark Star provides a rich perspective on the birth of WW II in the late 30’s from the point of view of an immigrant survivor of Polish pogroms, presently a Russian Jew, who as a journalist traveling abroad is recruited as a spy by the NKVD (the Russian secret intelligence service).
Yes, complex … but not much plot as such to this novel, which consists of the peregrinations and ensuing adventures and misadventures of one André Szara (outsider, and observer by profession—a journalist Jew), caught up in and witnessing, in Germany and Poland, the evolving anti-Semitic horror of that war…. Ironies abound, not the least one being that his role as professional witness ultimately saves his life.
Reading Dark Star, I realized how little I know about that time, that place, in particular about the demonically symbiotic relationship between Hitler and Stalin before they went to war. Fascinating!
My second in the series, and definitely not my last. This is not just one of the best spy novels, but one of the best historical novels, I have read in a good while, and I am determined to brush up on the history of pre WW II Europe.
Yes, complex … but not much plot as such to this novel, which consists of the peregrinations and ensuing adventures and misadventures of one André Szara (outsider, and observer by profession—a journalist Jew), caught up in and witnessing, in Germany and Poland, the evolving anti-Semitic horror of that war…. Ironies abound, not the least one being that his role as professional witness ultimately saves his life.
Reading Dark Star, I realized how little I know about that time, that place, in particular about the demonically symbiotic relationship between Hitler and Stalin before they went to war. Fascinating!
My second in the series, and definitely not my last. This is not just one of the best spy novels, but one of the best historical novels, I have read in a good while, and I am determined to brush up on the history of pre WW II Europe.
Read
October 14, 2020As usual with Furst's books, I learned quite a bit about European history of the 20th century -- he sneaks quite a bit of learning into his novels, and for this I am grateful.
I kept falling asleep while reading for this, but don't blame the author or the story -- it says much more about the state of my life in Oct. 2020 than it does about the book. So unfortunately there was a lot of plot development in the first half of the book that I only poorly retained, making the second half a little hard for me to get into.
I will refrain from assigning a star rating unless I get around to reading this again. I'm pretty sure that, under normal circumstances, I'd have enjoyed it quite a bit. (But with the caution that, like all spy novels with any hint of character development, people like to compare it to LeCarre, which simply isn't credible. Compare the love affairs -- I believe there were three -- of this protagonist compared with the agony of LeCarre's hero Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager, and they really aren't playing in the same stadium.)
I kept falling asleep while reading for this, but don't blame the author or the story -- it says much more about the state of my life in Oct. 2020 than it does about the book. So unfortunately there was a lot of plot development in the first half of the book that I only poorly retained, making the second half a little hard for me to get into.
I will refrain from assigning a star rating unless I get around to reading this again. I'm pretty sure that, under normal circumstances, I'd have enjoyed it quite a bit. (But with the caution that, like all spy novels with any hint of character development, people like to compare it to LeCarre, which simply isn't credible. Compare the love affairs -- I believe there were three -- of this protagonist compared with the agony of LeCarre's hero Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager, and they really aren't playing in the same stadium.)
March 10, 2022
I had no idea when I began reading this series that the places in which it is set - Central and Eastern Europe- would be in the forefront of current events. But it’s quite surreal, seeing how history is repeating itself right before our eyes. Putin may not have as much blood on his hands as Stalin, but it appears that he aspires to recreate his predecessors’ Evil Empire.
Furst’s writing is really quite good with flashes of brilliance at time. I found myself rereading certain passages that were just perfect. I know John Le Carré is usually lauded as the premier spy novelist, obviously for good reason, but IMO Furst is at least his equal.
Furst’s writing is really quite good with flashes of brilliance at time. I found myself rereading certain passages that were just perfect. I know John Le Carré is usually lauded as the premier spy novelist, obviously for good reason, but IMO Furst is at least his equal.
October 27, 2016
This is the second book by Alan Furst in this series. And, the story line is evolving and getting to be more interesting. It takes you into the inner workings of what was going in as World War 2 was about to start. For those of my friends, there is some sex in the book, but it by no means is detrimental to the story line. I will look forward to reading the next book in the series.
June 2, 2015
A vast improvement over his first World War II outing, 'Night Soldiers', 'Dark Star' sees Alan Furst finding his footing and delivering a lush, intricate, sprawling, and historically rich novel about a rootless Russian Jewish journalist who finds himself serving many masters between the course of 1936 and 1941.
This book is a good deal darker in tone than 'Night Soldiers'. The story mostly concerns the machinations of the NKVD, the Communist secret services under Stalin, and their endless, paranoid war against both the Nazis and themselves. Our hero, Andre Szara, is also considerably less than heroic this time around, an amoral journalist who is more of a survivor than anything. Initially, I found his character quite unlikable, so hollowed out that when he believes he is on his way to a meeting where he will be arrested and then killed he goes anyway, not knowing what else to do.
Andre Szara writes for the leading Communist mouthpiece, Pravda, but he also does 'favors' for the secret services on the side. Lately those favors have been getting more and more involved, and he suspects that he is getting direction from two different factions within the NKVD. Following the instructions he has been given lands Szara some real dynamite in his lap, information he never wanted and now must figure out how to dispose of, which leads him further into the tangled web of espionage. Soon Szara is working for the special services outright in Paris, but along the way he has also fallen in love and rediscovered who he is - just at the moment when having a moral compass might prove especially fatal: during Stalin's 'great purge'.
'Dark Star' establishes many of author Alan Furst's usual themes that he will return to in later books: an ordinary man with no pretensions of heroism, caught up in the tides of history and forced to rise to the occasion or perish. It also deals with some even larger issues. Szara is Jewish: originally from Poland but raised in Russia. In many ways he is a man without a country, yet he faces the same discrimination all Jews face. In Germany, of course, during his travels there, but he also begins to suspect that Stalin's purge might just be a cover for a Russian pogrom against the Jews.
Stalin, and the purge he initiated in the late 1930's, is another major theme of the book. The purge, which started with show trials of high ranking Communist Party members before expanding to include the secret services, the military, and then the general population, claimed anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of lives, depending on how the numbers are estimated. The reason for this murderous insanity, at a time when Russia was facing a mortal enemy, has always been obscure. In 'Dark Star', Szara seems to dangle on the end of puppet strings pulled by Stalin, and he wrestles with the question of what, exactly, this madman is up to, and comes away with some audacious answers.
I found the first third of the book to be a little bit of a slog, because Szara's character is initially so off-putting and also because the wheels-within-wheels nature of the plot could be hard to follow. We see events from Szara's viewpoint, which means things happen that are often unexplained at the time. However, Furst is pretty good about not leaving his reader dangling forever - stick around to the end and the things that can be explained will be.
Of course in real life, not everything has an explanation, and Furst incorporates that into his novels, which I think is lovely. Such incidents are not accidents or plot holes, they are explicitly called out - the main character shrugging, turning to the camera and saying, "We will likely never know." In his research for his novels, Furst canvasses newspaper clippings and personal journals for snippets of everyday life from the period, and in things like this I think it shows.
We meet lots of interesting characters along the way: Ilya Goldman reappears from 'Night Soldiers', as does General Bloch. We also meet an aristocratic Polish intelligence officer, a Russian actress, and many more. Furst has a gift for drawing vivid characters that feel true to their time and place and keep the reader invested in all the smoke-and-mirrors subterfuge.
Alan Furst is a master of his craft. 'Dark Star' shows him really coming into his own.
This book is a good deal darker in tone than 'Night Soldiers'. The story mostly concerns the machinations of the NKVD, the Communist secret services under Stalin, and their endless, paranoid war against both the Nazis and themselves. Our hero, Andre Szara, is also considerably less than heroic this time around, an amoral journalist who is more of a survivor than anything. Initially, I found his character quite unlikable, so hollowed out that when he believes he is on his way to a meeting where he will be arrested and then killed he goes anyway, not knowing what else to do.
Andre Szara writes for the leading Communist mouthpiece, Pravda, but he also does 'favors' for the secret services on the side. Lately those favors have been getting more and more involved, and he suspects that he is getting direction from two different factions within the NKVD. Following the instructions he has been given lands Szara some real dynamite in his lap, information he never wanted and now must figure out how to dispose of, which leads him further into the tangled web of espionage. Soon Szara is working for the special services outright in Paris, but along the way he has also fallen in love and rediscovered who he is - just at the moment when having a moral compass might prove especially fatal: during Stalin's 'great purge'.
'Dark Star' establishes many of author Alan Furst's usual themes that he will return to in later books: an ordinary man with no pretensions of heroism, caught up in the tides of history and forced to rise to the occasion or perish. It also deals with some even larger issues. Szara is Jewish: originally from Poland but raised in Russia. In many ways he is a man without a country, yet he faces the same discrimination all Jews face. In Germany, of course, during his travels there, but he also begins to suspect that Stalin's purge might just be a cover for a Russian pogrom against the Jews.
Stalin, and the purge he initiated in the late 1930's, is another major theme of the book. The purge, which started with show trials of high ranking Communist Party members before expanding to include the secret services, the military, and then the general population, claimed anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of lives, depending on how the numbers are estimated. The reason for this murderous insanity, at a time when Russia was facing a mortal enemy, has always been obscure. In 'Dark Star', Szara seems to dangle on the end of puppet strings pulled by Stalin, and he wrestles with the question of what, exactly, this madman is up to, and comes away with some audacious answers.
I found the first third of the book to be a little bit of a slog, because Szara's character is initially so off-putting and also because the wheels-within-wheels nature of the plot could be hard to follow. We see events from Szara's viewpoint, which means things happen that are often unexplained at the time. However, Furst is pretty good about not leaving his reader dangling forever - stick around to the end and the things that can be explained will be.
Of course in real life, not everything has an explanation, and Furst incorporates that into his novels, which I think is lovely. Such incidents are not accidents or plot holes, they are explicitly called out - the main character shrugging, turning to the camera and saying, "We will likely never know." In his research for his novels, Furst canvasses newspaper clippings and personal journals for snippets of everyday life from the period, and in things like this I think it shows.
We meet lots of interesting characters along the way: Ilya Goldman reappears from 'Night Soldiers', as does General Bloch. We also meet an aristocratic Polish intelligence officer, a Russian actress, and many more. Furst has a gift for drawing vivid characters that feel true to their time and place and keep the reader invested in all the smoke-and-mirrors subterfuge.
Alan Furst is a master of his craft. 'Dark Star' shows him really coming into his own.
September 13, 2009
Furst is a master at creating the atmosphere of the period about which he writes, the period just before and during World War II in Europe. This book's main character is a Polish/Soviet Jew foreign correspondent for Pravda who is recruited into the eerie and totally confusing world of espionage as Germany threatens to consume Europe and perhaps the world.
The plot to the novel is so convoluted, there is so much misdirection, that I found myself not knowing what I had just read or where the story would take me next. I decided that perhaps I just wasn't smart enough for this book.
The character of Andre Szara is an intriguing one. One can't really decide whether he is a hero or a villain or just an ordinary person trying to survive in extraordinary times.
When all seems lost near the end of the novel, Andre is saved once more and, finally, so is the poor reader as all is explicated. At last, one is able to understand what one has just read.
This is a book that kept my interest throughout, even when I wasn't sure what was happening, simply based on the power of the writing. It's not my normal cup of tea, but it would be great fun for fans of thrillers and espionage novels. Even I liked it.
The plot to the novel is so convoluted, there is so much misdirection, that I found myself not knowing what I had just read or where the story would take me next. I decided that perhaps I just wasn't smart enough for this book.
The character of Andre Szara is an intriguing one. One can't really decide whether he is a hero or a villain or just an ordinary person trying to survive in extraordinary times.
When all seems lost near the end of the novel, Andre is saved once more and, finally, so is the poor reader as all is explicated. At last, one is able to understand what one has just read.
This is a book that kept my interest throughout, even when I wasn't sure what was happening, simply based on the power of the writing. It's not my normal cup of tea, but it would be great fun for fans of thrillers and espionage novels. Even I liked it.
February 16, 2012
On the cover of this edition a New York Times review is quoted: A rich, deeply moving novel of suspense that is equal parts espionage thriller, European history and love story. I'm not sure of the "equal" part, but it is all of that.
I felt myself getting lost, however, in the espionage thriller part. Maybe I needed to be paying closer attention, but there were a lot of characters and, of course, they didn't all have the same motives. Reading espionage from the perspective of a Russian spy is interesting, simply because it's not the common perspective.
This novel takes place just before and the very beginning of World War II, and the action takes place in the major cities of continental Europe and some of the not so major ones. I'd like to say my knowledge of history is pretty good, but I'm afraid it's just short of adequate. Getting the feel of Europe in the late 1930s adds to my knowledge of this period without my reading non-fiction. Alan Furst has done his research and the reader is the beneficiary.
The Night Soldiers novels are more a collection than a series. Each can be read as a stand alone, although apparently there are characters who reappear in some of them. I plan to read them in order of publication, but it isn't necessary.
I felt myself getting lost, however, in the espionage thriller part. Maybe I needed to be paying closer attention, but there were a lot of characters and, of course, they didn't all have the same motives. Reading espionage from the perspective of a Russian spy is interesting, simply because it's not the common perspective.
This novel takes place just before and the very beginning of World War II, and the action takes place in the major cities of continental Europe and some of the not so major ones. I'd like to say my knowledge of history is pretty good, but I'm afraid it's just short of adequate. Getting the feel of Europe in the late 1930s adds to my knowledge of this period without my reading non-fiction. Alan Furst has done his research and the reader is the beneficiary.
The Night Soldiers novels are more a collection than a series. Each can be read as a stand alone, although apparently there are characters who reappear in some of them. I plan to read them in order of publication, but it isn't necessary.
March 29, 2008
If you want to get the feeling of what it was like to live in the years of the early 30s into WW II, and the terror of the rise of Hitler, this is the book. Furst writes a terrific spy novel based on sound historical research. Even the minor characters linger for days after you put the book away.
April 4, 2020
Just like it was with the first book in the series, I realized that I actually prefer Furst’s later books to his early ones. Don’t get me wrong, “Dark Star” is very well-written and has lots of well-researched historical information, but it’s just a bit much too long and overwritten. Sometimes the plot just drags and drags without anything going on, making the reader (at least this one) lose interest. And it definitely suffers from the lack of dialogue. But that’s the cons; as for the pros, the choice of the protagonist is marvelous and I really enjoyed getting to virtually know André Szara, a Soviet journalist who gets involved with an espionage network and finds out for himself what it feels like, to be a pawn in the higher-ups' games. He has a quick mind, good instincts, and a talent for observation - the qualities, which saved him quite a few times. As it is always the case with Furst’s thrillers, his settings are incredibly vivid and instantly spring to live with every new page turned. I felt like I was actually there, wandering around Parisian streets along with Szara, escaping the clutches of the enraged mob in a small town near Berlin, and narrowly avoiding being captured by the NKVD in Poland. Even though I personally prefer his later books in which plots are “tighter,” I’d definitely recommend “Dark Star” and the entire Night Soldiers series to all lovers of the genre.
September 19, 2009
I am beginning to become a serious fan of Furst's work. [Dark Star:] is definitely a darker work than the last Furst I read The Polish Officer, and that really is saying something. I'm really not sure how accurately Furst portrays the thinking of a Soviet citizen living through Stalin's purges, but it is certainly believable. Furst proposes several theories for the purges as his main character, Andre Szara, tries to navigate the pitfalls of pre-war Europe. I wish I could measure the believability of these theories that Furst puts in the mouths of his characters. Unfortunately, When I treid to read the the seminal history of the Purges, Robert Conquest's The Great Terror, I just couldn't drag myself through it.
The most interesting contrast I felt in the book was between the terror regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. In both countries, a knock on the door in the middle of the night usually meant a visit from the secret police and the disappearance of at least one family member, usually forever. However, in Germany, you had a pretty good idea of why you being arrested and on whose authority that arrest was happening. In Russia, the Terror was much less predictable. The state apparatus turned on minorities, dissidents, rivals, and even itself. Sometimes it seems clear that Stalin was targeting those he felt were a threat to him, at other times, he seemed to be terrorizing the whole country. Furst surmises that some portions of the purge were factional infighting within the government, with no clear hand from above.
All of this is buffered in the book by having Szara, spend most of his time in Paris, Berlin, or Poland, working as a semi-reluctant spy-master for the NKVD under the cover of his previous life as a journalist from ,a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda&q.... This plethora of settings hurts the pacing a bit. Dark Star is over twice as long as The Polish Officer, and it certainly felt it. Still, this novel felt a bit more solid than the very impressionistic and almost ethereal detachment of The Polish Officer.
The most interesting contrast I felt in the book was between the terror regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. In both countries, a knock on the door in the middle of the night usually meant a visit from the secret police and the disappearance of at least one family member, usually forever. However, in Germany, you had a pretty good idea of why you being arrested and on whose authority that arrest was happening. In Russia, the Terror was much less predictable. The state apparatus turned on minorities, dissidents, rivals, and even itself. Sometimes it seems clear that Stalin was targeting those he felt were a threat to him, at other times, he seemed to be terrorizing the whole country. Furst surmises that some portions of the purge were factional infighting within the government, with no clear hand from above.
All of this is buffered in the book by having Szara, spend most of his time in Paris, Berlin, or Poland, working as a semi-reluctant spy-master for the NKVD under the cover of his previous life as a journalist from ,a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda&q.... This plethora of settings hurts the pacing a bit. Dark Star is over twice as long as The Polish Officer, and it certainly felt it. Still, this novel felt a bit more solid than the very impressionistic and almost ethereal detachment of The Polish Officer.
May 23, 2012
As I've said in other reviews, Alan Furst is my writing hero, so it pains me to give Dark Star less than four stars. But I do; perhaps not because of any faults but rather my inability to connect with it.
This is the second in his Night Soldiers series and one of Furst's earlier works. It shares many of the qualities that have established Furst as the John LeCarre of interwar Mitteleuropa espionage: the economically drawn settings, the sharply observed dialog, the ring of authenticity in the details of everyday 1930s life, the intricate plots and intriguing characters.
So why am I not in love? To start with, the star of this show, Andre Szara (a Russified Polish Jew who writes for Pravda), doesn't start directing his own fate until two-thirds of the book has passed; he's the most passive of the Furst protagonists I've met so far. His diffidence makes it hard to tell whether some of the plot points bode well or ill for him, since he evinces no clear idea of where he wants to go or what he wants to do. It's one thing to fall into the espionage game -- that's a standard Furstian trope -- but quite another to fall into most of the major events that make up these five years of Szara's life.
The structure of this book is more like five short stories connected through the central character than a single novel with an overarching narrative thread. When Szara finally takes charge of his life in the fourth episode, the break with what has come before is emphasized by this structure and calls attention to itself. Major characters from previous episodes disappear without having been killed, and Szara spends little time thinking of them once they're gone, another continuity challenge aggravated by this structure. I found it off-putting; your mileage may vary.
If you're already ensnared in Furst's world, by all means go ahead and read Dark Star. If you're new to the series, start with some of the more accessible installments such as The World at Night or The Polish Officer. Night Soldiers is a series in theme rather than narrative, so you don't need to start at the beginning in order to appreciate it.
This is the second in his Night Soldiers series and one of Furst's earlier works. It shares many of the qualities that have established Furst as the John LeCarre of interwar Mitteleuropa espionage: the economically drawn settings, the sharply observed dialog, the ring of authenticity in the details of everyday 1930s life, the intricate plots and intriguing characters.
So why am I not in love? To start with, the star of this show, Andre Szara (a Russified Polish Jew who writes for Pravda), doesn't start directing his own fate until two-thirds of the book has passed; he's the most passive of the Furst protagonists I've met so far. His diffidence makes it hard to tell whether some of the plot points bode well or ill for him, since he evinces no clear idea of where he wants to go or what he wants to do. It's one thing to fall into the espionage game -- that's a standard Furstian trope -- but quite another to fall into most of the major events that make up these five years of Szara's life.
The structure of this book is more like five short stories connected through the central character than a single novel with an overarching narrative thread. When Szara finally takes charge of his life in the fourth episode, the break with what has come before is emphasized by this structure and calls attention to itself. Major characters from previous episodes disappear without having been killed, and Szara spends little time thinking of them once they're gone, another continuity challenge aggravated by this structure. I found it off-putting; your mileage may vary.
If you're already ensnared in Furst's world, by all means go ahead and read Dark Star. If you're new to the series, start with some of the more accessible installments such as The World at Night or The Polish Officer. Night Soldiers is a series in theme rather than narrative, so you don't need to start at the beginning in order to appreciate it.
August 16, 2013
Sent to Alan Furst( saves me re- writing a review)..I wanted to congratulate you on your excellent novels. I just finished Dark Star and previously read Mission to Paris. I've read a few of your earlier works, as well. Dark Star just enthralled me. I devour historical and espionage novels, particularly about the era of pre -WWII through the Cold War( if it's LeCarre ). I didn't think you could supplant Smiley's creator as my favorite spymaster novelist , but you have. That's an accomplishment. What I truly value in your writing is the richness and depth of your character development and scene setting. I also appreciate learning a bit more of a subject I thought I'd exhausted. The perspective of a Russian Jewish NKVD double or triple , I kind of lost count, agent was an angle not appreciated or described in the works I've encountered. Your story cast a new light on the chaotic political power struggle in Soviet Russia as well as an explanation for Stalin's actions in the War's early phases. As a fellow Obie('78), I'm happy to know such a great author went to the same school as I.
I'm hungry for more material, please. ( I know it's a lot easier to read a novel than write one, so no pressure).
Sincerely, Alan Jay Cohen, M.D.
I'm hungry for more material, please. ( I know it's a lot easier to read a novel than write one, so no pressure).
Sincerely, Alan Jay Cohen, M.D.
May 3, 2012
Similar to recent books it seems, this took a bit longer to get into, and involved a "re-start". I bought the book originally on a recommendation in a review -- if you like the one reviewed, this is much better. I would totally agree. This is historical fiction or perhaps better described as a historical spy novel. I restarted the book because I got lost in the "who is the good guy" question. There was a theme there, not knowing who the good guy was. Our Szara gets himself in a jam and narrowly escapes once, twice, and more. Most jams are mental, the waiting, the watching, the not knowing, the mistrust, the bigger political and military monster out of control.
I recently traveled to Krakow, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. The people of eastern Europe go to great lengths not to forget the struggles, the lack of security, the uncertainty, the atrocities of the Nazis, followed shortly thereafter by the atrocities of the Communists. It puts this book in perspective and I felt I could relate to the history in a better and more personal way.
A highly recommended book but not an easy or quick read. Savor the uncertainty of the next page.
I recently traveled to Krakow, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. The people of eastern Europe go to great lengths not to forget the struggles, the lack of security, the uncertainty, the atrocities of the Nazis, followed shortly thereafter by the atrocities of the Communists. It puts this book in perspective and I felt I could relate to the history in a better and more personal way.
A highly recommended book but not an easy or quick read. Savor the uncertainty of the next page.
June 6, 2013
Alan Furst's great historical espionage novel, Dark Star is a prewar epic of Europe's moral ambiguities and shifting loyalties. Told through the eyes of Pravda journalist and Luftmensch (and sometimes NKVD spy) André Szara, the story stretches from Paris to Berlin, Warsaw, and even down to Izmir. In this novel Furst examines ideas of trust and suspicion, love and hate, magnetism and repulsion.
It is a novel about the compromises good men make to survive, the power that a few evil men have over millions, and the sacrifices a few Luftmenschen make to save thousands. Ultimately, Dark Star is a story of the Russian and German nonaggression pact (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) at the beginning of WWII and how the Jewish members of Stalin's spy network were forced to make huge compromises to survive (most didn't survive) and how some were pushed into heroics because decency and the times demanded it.
The magic of this novel is that Furst is able to unweave the complicated nature of the prewar spy alliances and show all the different threads and colors and never lose the reader. His prose is amazing. His characters are nearly perfect. One of my favorite historical spy novels of all time.
It is a novel about the compromises good men make to survive, the power that a few evil men have over millions, and the sacrifices a few Luftmenschen make to save thousands. Ultimately, Dark Star is a story of the Russian and German nonaggression pact (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) at the beginning of WWII and how the Jewish members of Stalin's spy network were forced to make huge compromises to survive (most didn't survive) and how some were pushed into heroics because decency and the times demanded it.
The magic of this novel is that Furst is able to unweave the complicated nature of the prewar spy alliances and show all the different threads and colors and never lose the reader. His prose is amazing. His characters are nearly perfect. One of my favorite historical spy novels of all time.
August 27, 2010
This is the (I believe) longest (almost 600 pages) and, so far, the best of the several of Furst's novels I have read. I would rate it six
stars if I could. In Dark Star, the protagonist is a Poland (Pale of Settlement) born Jew who grows up in Odessa Russia, fights for the Bolshevics in the Revolution of 1917, becomes an international reporter for Pravda, and is dragooned into doing intelligence work for the NKVD in the late 1930's. It is excellent spy fiction that takes place against superbly researched historical background. I guarantee that you will never think of the Hitler/Stalin Non-aggression Pact in the same way ever again.
stars if I could. In Dark Star, the protagonist is a Poland (Pale of Settlement) born Jew who grows up in Odessa Russia, fights for the Bolshevics in the Revolution of 1917, becomes an international reporter for Pravda, and is dragooned into doing intelligence work for the NKVD in the late 1930's. It is excellent spy fiction that takes place against superbly researched historical background. I guarantee that you will never think of the Hitler/Stalin Non-aggression Pact in the same way ever again.
August 11, 2021
Dark Star is my favorite novel by Mr. Furst, and boy does he nail the noir atmosphere of the cities, from Moscow, Paris, Berlin and a few others. Rainy nights, trench coats with upturned collars, fedora's, lovers, and then comes the spy craft to top it off.
August 19, 2019
If the definition of a thriller is a work that excites the reader or viewer, or contains a twisting plot and action that leaves the reader on the edge of his seat, then Alan Furst probably cannot be classified as a writer of thrillers. The books, at least so far, that Furst writes do not thrill, instead they astonish. They astonish the reader’s mind for detail, they astonish his capacity for emotion, they astonish in their beauty and their minimalism. More importantly, as these are spy novels, remember, they astonish in how they develop intrigue and how they provide escape. With the exception of several scenes portraying the German invasion of Poland in 1939, there are perhaps two gunshots in the entire book. There are no high speed car chases, no leaps from tall buildings. What we get, instead, is one man—seriously, our protagonist is on 98% of the book’s pages—caught up in an intelligence battle far larger than himself that leads to a run for freedom through west-central Europe. How this man makes it out, and whether he does at all, is startling in its humanity and its drama, all while remaining extremely grounded.
Like in this book’s triumphant predecessor—Night Soldiers—Furst captures the intelligence trade very well, especially as the practitioners involved are Russian and German. Their hidden war, even during a time of alliance, drives much of the drama, but the book contains a wild MacGuffin: a dossier detailing Joseph Stalin’s work for the czar in the days prior to the Revolution. This dossier drives the first half of the book’s plot, as Stalin’s allies in the intelligence apparat seek it and its carrier. The second half centers on first a plot to use German manufacturing data as a carrot to entice the British government to issue more visas to Jewish refugees to Mandatory Palestine, and then moves to our hero fleeing first Germans, then Russians, then Germans again. There is so much that also occurs surrounding these events, some explicitly stated, some less so. While dense, it moves very quickly. However, the reader must remain disciplined and chew each sentence and paragraph carefully. There is much unsaid in Furst.
There are many variables at play in Dark Star: a journalist working for a propaganda newspaper, a Jew seeking some justice for his people, a Russian unsure of his place in the USSR, a man coerced into intelligence work who finds he is rather quite good at it, a lover seeking any way to get his beloved out of danger and to be with her. These individuals are all one man, our hero and main window onto the story. These identities never battle one another on the page—but obviously do in our character’s state of mind. That is a fantastic accomplishment. The reader develops a real fondness for the protagonist. His older age (over 40) adds a more mature dimension to this novel compared to the younger men and women of Night Soldiers. He seems real and in actual danger, and we are rooting for him the entire time. In that regard this book could have been 800 pages long, but the 400 we receive leaves the reader well satiated. Furst writes with balanced precision and beauty. While a romantic, he never subordinates the seriousness of his plot and his people to easy pulls of the heartstrings. In Furst, everything is earned. It is less ambitious than Night Soldiers, and thus perhaps not as good. But the challenge Furst undertakes here is immense in its own right: to use one man and his heart, mind, and soul as our vehicle. Needless to say, he pulls it off, and because of that this is very nearly a five-star entry. He is a splendid writer, and this is a marvelous story. That may be the easiest way to leave it.
Like in this book’s triumphant predecessor—Night Soldiers—Furst captures the intelligence trade very well, especially as the practitioners involved are Russian and German. Their hidden war, even during a time of alliance, drives much of the drama, but the book contains a wild MacGuffin: a dossier detailing Joseph Stalin’s work for the czar in the days prior to the Revolution. This dossier drives the first half of the book’s plot, as Stalin’s allies in the intelligence apparat seek it and its carrier. The second half centers on first a plot to use German manufacturing data as a carrot to entice the British government to issue more visas to Jewish refugees to Mandatory Palestine, and then moves to our hero fleeing first Germans, then Russians, then Germans again. There is so much that also occurs surrounding these events, some explicitly stated, some less so. While dense, it moves very quickly. However, the reader must remain disciplined and chew each sentence and paragraph carefully. There is much unsaid in Furst.
There are many variables at play in Dark Star: a journalist working for a propaganda newspaper, a Jew seeking some justice for his people, a Russian unsure of his place in the USSR, a man coerced into intelligence work who finds he is rather quite good at it, a lover seeking any way to get his beloved out of danger and to be with her. These individuals are all one man, our hero and main window onto the story. These identities never battle one another on the page—but obviously do in our character’s state of mind. That is a fantastic accomplishment. The reader develops a real fondness for the protagonist. His older age (over 40) adds a more mature dimension to this novel compared to the younger men and women of Night Soldiers. He seems real and in actual danger, and we are rooting for him the entire time. In that regard this book could have been 800 pages long, but the 400 we receive leaves the reader well satiated. Furst writes with balanced precision and beauty. While a romantic, he never subordinates the seriousness of his plot and his people to easy pulls of the heartstrings. In Furst, everything is earned. It is less ambitious than Night Soldiers, and thus perhaps not as good. But the challenge Furst undertakes here is immense in its own right: to use one man and his heart, mind, and soul as our vehicle. Needless to say, he pulls it off, and because of that this is very nearly a five-star entry. He is a splendid writer, and this is a marvelous story. That may be the easiest way to leave it.
July 25, 2020
A Polish Jew, who is a reporter for Pravda, is asked by competing members of the Soviet secret police to carry out a few espionage-related operations in the lead-up to World War II.
Alan Furst is a master of atmosphere. Few authors, regardless of genre, have his sense of time and place. From the buildings to the clothes to the attitudes, he nails it all. It is the single greatest aspect of his writing that everyone comments on, and with good reason. Reading one of his earlier works is a master class in setting and certainly worth the cover price alone.
The plot of this novel, however, is rather ho-hum. It can mostly be summed up this way: a guy does some things. That is a bit harsh, because we do learn a lot about espionage during that time period, but it's not far off the truth. Furst, in his early works, didn't really have much idea how to tie his characters' actions together. It really isn't random what the reporter is doing in this story, but you'd never know that from the way Furst writes it. He gets it right in later books, but it's still an oversight in this one. The last one-third of the novel is better, but you sort of have to go through the first two-thirds wondering how it all relates. It just doesn't have that feeling of connection that other thriller writers automatically imbue their novels with.
As the second novel in a series, it's nice to see some of the crossover characters from his first one. It isn't a sequel at all, just a shared world with characters who happen to be on the same journey. Sometimes these secondary characters even outshine the main ones, but that's part of the fun of reading his books.
For people new to reading Furst, I wouldn't really recommend this one to start with. It is easily his most quotable one, and the invasion of Poland is really well done, but it's just too different from his others. I'd rate it 3 1/3 stars--3 for the first two-thirds, and 4 for the last one-third. He found his stride by book four, The World at Night, so that's where I'd start. Then read, in any order, through to book nine, The Foreign Correspondent. After that you can continue on or else to back to book one. The quality of book 12, Mission to Paris, and onward is pretty atrocious, though, so I wouldn't recommend those.
Alan Furst is a master of atmosphere. Few authors, regardless of genre, have his sense of time and place. From the buildings to the clothes to the attitudes, he nails it all. It is the single greatest aspect of his writing that everyone comments on, and with good reason. Reading one of his earlier works is a master class in setting and certainly worth the cover price alone.
The plot of this novel, however, is rather ho-hum. It can mostly be summed up this way: a guy does some things. That is a bit harsh, because we do learn a lot about espionage during that time period, but it's not far off the truth. Furst, in his early works, didn't really have much idea how to tie his characters' actions together. It really isn't random what the reporter is doing in this story, but you'd never know that from the way Furst writes it. He gets it right in later books, but it's still an oversight in this one. The last one-third of the novel is better, but you sort of have to go through the first two-thirds wondering how it all relates. It just doesn't have that feeling of connection that other thriller writers automatically imbue their novels with.
As the second novel in a series, it's nice to see some of the crossover characters from his first one. It isn't a sequel at all, just a shared world with characters who happen to be on the same journey. Sometimes these secondary characters even outshine the main ones, but that's part of the fun of reading his books.
For people new to reading Furst, I wouldn't really recommend this one to start with. It is easily his most quotable one, and the invasion of Poland is really well done, but it's just too different from his others. I'd rate it 3 1/3 stars--3 for the first two-thirds, and 4 for the last one-third. He found his stride by book four, The World at Night, so that's where I'd start. Then read, in any order, through to book nine, The Foreign Correspondent. After that you can continue on or else to back to book one. The quality of book 12, Mission to Paris, and onward is pretty atrocious, though, so I wouldn't recommend those.
December 18, 2019
Dark Star is an historical fiction spy thriller set in Europe between 1937 and 1940.
As Europe struggles to avoid another war, we meet André Szara, a Russian journalist recruited by a Soviet secret intelligence agency and placed in Paris. He enlists the owner of a factory in Berlin which supplies crucial parts for Germany’s war-planes and sends the monthly production figures back to Moscow. However, he’s never sure if the agent has been compromised and if his figures can be trusted.
Any good spy thriller will be complex and the mix of Russian and German intelligence agencies added extra layers to the story. With an intricate plot, this book needed my full concentration to keep up with the secrets. I liked how Furst painted a harsh picture of life, showing just how precarious and precious it can be.
The story uses Szara’s journalist cover to send him across Europe and I particularly enjoyed the parts that took place in Poland and later when he went off-grid. The horrors of war and life felt very real and it was easy to understand how people grabbed at moments of happiness in the insanity which went on all around.
As Europe struggles to avoid another war, we meet André Szara, a Russian journalist recruited by a Soviet secret intelligence agency and placed in Paris. He enlists the owner of a factory in Berlin which supplies crucial parts for Germany’s war-planes and sends the monthly production figures back to Moscow. However, he’s never sure if the agent has been compromised and if his figures can be trusted.
Any good spy thriller will be complex and the mix of Russian and German intelligence agencies added extra layers to the story. With an intricate plot, this book needed my full concentration to keep up with the secrets. I liked how Furst painted a harsh picture of life, showing just how precarious and precious it can be.
The story uses Szara’s journalist cover to send him across Europe and I particularly enjoyed the parts that took place in Poland and later when he went off-grid. The horrors of war and life felt very real and it was easy to understand how people grabbed at moments of happiness in the insanity which went on all around.
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