Customer Reviews

The Foreign Correspondent

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

It is December 1938 and a small group of Italian exiles meet in the back room of the Cafe Europa in Paris. The editor of their underground newspaper Liberazione has just been assasinated by the Italian secret police and they need to find a new editor. They choose Carlo Weisz, a foreign correspondent for the Rueters News Agency. The novel that follows is Carlo Weisz battle to keep the anti-fascist Liberazione alive and publishing. To do this, he must enter the shadowy world of French, British and Italian spies.

There are very few authors who can legitimately say they dominate a genre of literature. In the same way that John Le Carre owns the Cold War spy novel or Louis L'Amour the Western, Alan Furst is the great stylist of the 1930's spy novel. Furst is not interested in the high end spy but rather the every day working spy. In classic Furst style, "The Foreign Correspondent" takes the reader to battlefields of Spain, French internment camps, Genoese dockyards and to Paris' working class neighborhoods. Because Furst writes only about this period, he is able to fill his novels with the gritty details that make his stories believable.

So how does "The Foreign Correspondent" fall within the body of Furst's work. It is somewhere in the middle. It is not his best nor his worst novel. I like the world Alan Furst creates and even one of his average novels gives me great pleasure. For those who like Furst's novels, check out the works of Eric Ambler, the first master of this genre.

A friend of mine in London recently asked for a suggestion about a good book to read on the night train from Munich to Prague. I immediately recommended Alan Furst's King of Shadows, which opens on the night train from Budapest to Paris. An Alan Furst novel is often the answer to a request for a `good read'. His latest, "Foreign Correspondent", is no exception

Furst comes from a line of writers that can be traced back to both Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. Like Ambler, Furst often takes an unassuming, or unwitting civilian and immerses him in a world of mystery and intrigue in pre and post-World War II Europe. Foreign Correspondent opens in Civil War Spain but quickly moves to pre-war Paris. Italian journalist Carlo Weisz, a refugee from Mussolini's fascist Italy living in Paris, is part of a group of Italian expatriates who print a dissident newspaper, Liberazione, and smuggle it into Italy. The Italian secret police, the OVRA, has infiltrated the group. One of its members has been murdered and each member of the group is feeling the effects of the OVRA turning the screws on their operations. At the same time Weisz' day job as a foreign correspondent for Reuters takes him back and forth to the Berlin of Hitler, Himmler, and Goring. It is in Berlin that Weisz reunites with and reignites his affair with Christa von Schirren. Along the way Weisz comes to the attention of and is recruited by British Intelligence. The plot outline is simple: will Weisz and his cell continue to publish Liberazione and will Weisz be able to get Christa out of Berlin before the war that everyone knows is coming closes all borders.

Furst's strong point has always been how he sets the scene. His atmospherics are tremendous. His descriptions of the streets of Berlin or Paris or Barcelona and the atmosphere of those cities reek of authenticity. Similarly, Furst has a keen eye for the inner life of his protagonists. Almost invariably Furst manages to convey a real sense of how those protagonists think and feel. Both of these elements of his writing generally dominate his plotting and are primarily responsible for getting the reader to turn to the next page. This is certainly the case with Foreign Correspondent. The plot itself is not complex and it did not leave me wondering what was going to happen next. Similarly, the book did not really build to a real climax. The book ended more with a sigh than with a bang. Some may find that a bit disappointing. However, as readers of Furst's books already know his novels strive for authenticity. In much of life, particularly in the era Furst writes about, storybook endings or dramatic endings are more the exception than the rule. However, despite being aware of this I think the ending was more than a bit anti-climactic and more so than in some of his other novels.

All in all, and as the title of the review suggests, despite some weakness in plotting (in my opinion) Foreign Correspondent will make for a satisfying read for a long, lazy summer day or a freezing winter night.

This is not a novel into which he has put much effort. I have read every book in Furst's admirable series about men and women caught up in the resistance movements of World War II and I have enjoyed every one until "The Foreign Correspondent". Books like "The Polish Officer" and "Kingdom of Shadows" are worthy of the highest praise but in this latest effort the plot is a recycled one; the action is thin; the use of recurrent characters has now reached joke proportions. Please, Mr Furst, either get back your interest in this series or move on to something that engages your considerable talents.

Although I am a Furst fan, I put off reading this because of lukewarm reviews. I finally read it though, and I loved this book as much as any of Furst's books and the reviews now mystify me. The book has the same great, brooding atmosphere, likable characters, moral complexity, and tense, steadily building suspense.

I look forward to new novels by Alan Furst more than those by any other writer. However, I've just re-read The Foreign Correspondent and I still feel it's the least satisfying of his works. Furst seems to be fallng ever more in love with his descriptions of the ambience of pre-war Paris, to the point where passages of the novel read like self-parody. For example, there's a somewhat cringeworthy scene set at the restaurant which features in all his novels; it has cameos from characters who had more or less major roles in several of his previous works and adds nothing in terms of plot or character development. What is missing from The Foreign Correspondent is any sense of urgency. I'm reminded of The World at Night, which had a similar slight air of aimlessness but to Furst's credit he came back suberbly after that with Red Gold. Those two novels are extremely satisfying if read as halves of one complete work so perhaps Furst will return to the protagonist of The Foreign Correspondent and develop a plot around him which is the equal of his excellent characterisation

I have read all of Furst's books numerous times, but this one is a real disappointment. It is more of a sketch of a story than a story. In all of his war novels, the characters drift realistically through love, hunger, and housing problems while doing their part in fighting against totalitarianism. The difference in this book is that drifting dominates while any effort at plot development or the building of suspense is completely abandoned. I'll wait for the next one to come out in paper.

In "The Foreign Correspondent", Alan Furst has moved away from his traditional novels populated with characters from lesser known Eastern European nations. The main characters are Italian émigrés in France, which does carry on the line of lost and exiled heroes that often appear in his novels. I think he has been moving in new directions since his last novel, "Dark Voyage", set primarily on board a freighter, and these latest works are as successful as the previous despite their differences. Carlo Weisz is also a more traditional hero than some of Furst's other sordid characters: he is a reporter for Reuters with a love interest working against the Nazis in Berlin. The setting is still in the late interwar years, a commonality with the previous novels, and Weisz makes a difficult and dangerous transition from mild opposition against the Fascists in Italy to outright subversion of his home government through the course of the novel; their particular weapon being a anti-fascist underground newspaper. The crisis is ignited by a political assassination in Paris and has far reaching consequences for Weisz and his companions. Throughout the novel Weisz and his émigré friends are hounded by OVRA operatives, courted by both the British SIS and the French Interior Ministry, and must find ways to survive in a world that is often annoyed with their presence. Furst also continues to include some familiar characters from his pervious adventures at the famous Brasserie Heininger in a very well written chapter (it is never a forced encounter, surprisingly). What will keep you up late reading is the main dilemma of the novel: will both Weisz and his lover Christa von Schirren survive, and will they be together?

Although this novel can easily be read as a stand-alone book, some readers will enjoy beginning their foray into Furst's world with "Night Soldiers", his original and possibly best spy novel. This book introduces several characters who make appearances throughout Furst's other novels set in the same period of time and general geographical local. Because of this fact, I highly recommend reading this novel first, although those that follow can typically be read in any particular order (the exception being the stories involving Jean Casson - World at Night and Red Gold).

What makes Furst's loosely structured series so compelling is that 1; they are very well researched and historical very accurate, especially with regard to spy craft - as I understand it through academic experience only. 2; the characters are extremely flawed, very believable and interesting to empathize with - all of the characters and their adventures provoke much thought. 3; the novels do not attempt to achieve a false sense of conclusion at their end - they always allow the reader to decide for him/herself what happens, and they rarely resolve the feeling of tension that pervades Furst's works. 4; the secondary characters are always very well developed and much more interesting than their sometimes small roles would have the reader believe- so one is always off balance (who will live, who will die - who can be trusted, who cannot?). 5; Furst does an excellent job of setting the atmosphere of terror that resulted from the conflict between fascism, Stalinism and freedom during the secret wars preceding the outbreak of the Second World War.

Although this is not Furst's best novel by far (for that start with "Night Soldiers"), you cannot go wrong with the "Foreign Correspondent". For anyone interested in reading and enjoying spy stories, or stories of world war two, this book is a must read.

Typically, Furst has hit the big time with his least successful effort. I have read every book the author has ever written and it would appear that his work has become incredibly formulaic. While the early books had heart and energy and characters who were lost and lonely but always valiant, this time around the whole thing creaks like a haunted house. The characters are plastic and unsympathetic; their dilemmas are old news. Furst has plowed these fields far more productively in the past. The Foreign Correspondent is an old turkey overstuffed with research that practically shouts at the reader, "Hey, check me out! I am research. Am I fascinating and great, or what?" No subtlety, a terrible (almost criminal) misuse of commas that actually alter the meaning of sentences, and a mistreatment of English as a primary language. (Allright is NOT one word!) Who edited this? They need to be forced to attend nightly grammar classes for six months. When they've finished that, they need to attend basic sentence structure classes. In the meantime, I agree with the other reviewers: Mr. Furst needs to create a new formula. This one is not even remotely representative of his best work.

I have to agree with everyone who found The Foreign Correspondent a listless rehashing of increasingly shopworn characters and effects. Carlo is Casson without the freshness or depth. The scene at Henninger's, featuring protagonists of earlier and better novels, is a joke on the reader. Doesn't Furst have an editor? Or does his ms. go straight to the printer? Here's an idea: if Random House can't afford to provide Furst with an editor's advice, why not show the draft of his next novel to 20 typical readers? I'm sure the result of such a process would be a book in keeping with what we all know Furst is capable of. What do you say, Alan?

With 'Foreign Correspondent', Alan Furst's renown continues to grow. Furst once again centers his novel in pre-World War Two Paris, but this time his protagonist hails from southern Europe - Italy - rather than France or eastern Europe.

Carlo Weisz is a journalist with the Associated Press (in a time when the AP was still a very big deal) in Paris where he has landed after fleeing Mussolini's Fascist Italy (absurdly Fascist, as one of Furst's character's suggests?). The book opens with a political assassination in Paris and then we find Weisz in the waning days of the Spanish Civil War and where he makes a connection that serves him well while covering the Republicans.

Weisz is also active in publishing a resistenza newspaper that is smuggled back into Italy. As per usual, Weisz is a rather ordinary, if talented, man with good moral instincts. Slowly he is drawn into ever more daring acts of resistance. Along the way he renews a love interest in Berlin just before things go from ugly to intolerable. Weisz seeks to use his career and his underground work to somehow rescue the fraulein from Herr Himmler's Gestapo.

Furst once again uses the backdrop of Europe edging to the precipice of war - Paris, Nazis, the Spanish Civil War, a love affair - to give us another great historical spy novel.