Night Soldiers [Hardcover]

Alan Furst (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1988

This highly original novel charting the rise of the intelligence services in pre-war Eastern Europe first established Alan Furst's remarkable reputation. Now it is to be reissued in B-format, in a new cover style, alongside his new paperback, The World at Night. In Bulgaria in 1934 nineteen-year-old Khristo Stoianev sees his brother kicked to death by a gang of strutting thugs. Realising the growing menace of Fascism, he takes a risk on the promise of Communism and flees to Moscow, where he is trained as an agent of the NKVD, precursor of the KGB, and forms a close bond with a group of fellow students. His first mission is to Catalonia, where he is soon caught up in the bloody horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Then he learns he is to be the victim of one of Stalin's purges, and is forced to flee once again, this time to Paris!

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When a small-town Bulgarian landlord, a grocer and their cohorts, decked out in foolish uniforms and caps with goose feathers, hear a village teenager ridicule their march, they do what petty fasciststaking their cue from the no-longer laughable Nazisdid best: they gang up on the boy and kill him. Set in 1934, this evocative, moving novel concerns the travails of the boy's brother, Khristo Stoianev. Khristo, realizing the menace of fascism, takes a risk on the promise of communism and flies east to Moscow, where he becomes a promising agent of the NKVD, predecessor of the KGB. His superiors assign him to Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War and Khristo begins to experience the relentlessly cruel, cataclysmic decades of World War II and its aftermath. Furst shows a remarkable talent in his fifth novel, integrating details about the cultures of Spain, France and Eastern Europe with a fascinating story of the constantly changing, constantly unpredictable events of that world at war. Moreover, he is never so carried away by his character's adventures that he fails to accurately depict the true scale of a man's tragic life, a life like that of many who suffered during those terrible years.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A young Bulgarian, Khristo, is recruited into an elite unit of the Soviet espionage network. Bloodied and betrayed in the Spanish Civil War, he seeks oblivion in Paris but soon leads fresh sorties, this time against his Red spymasters. As World War II closes in, secret contacts among those who trained together makes it possible for most of them to evade the revenge of their former Russian overlords and eventually find their way to well-deserved refuge. An engaging writer and Esquire contributor, Furst deploys communists, fascists, and American naifs in Europe's theater of war and supports the action and romance with well-researched detail. Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 437 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (T) (January 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395437806
• ISBN-13: 978-0395437803
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #705,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alan Furst is widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel. Now translated into seventeen languages, he is the bestselling author of Night Soldiers, Dark Star, The Polish Officer, The World at Night, Red Gold, Kingdom of Shadows, Blood of Victory, Dark Voyage, and The Foreign Correspondent Born in New York, he now lives in Paris and on Long Island.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

116 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The beginning of a first-rate sequence of espionage novels, February 25, 2001

By 

Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Night Soldiers (Paperback)

With "Night Soldiers", Alan Furst began a sequence of espionage novels set in the Europe of the late 1930's and early 1940's. Note that I said "sequence" and not "series". Only two of the six novels published thus far feature the same hero, but all are connected by time and place and the recurrence of certain secondary characters who step from the shadows in various books. Although, perhaps there really is one constant, recurring central character -- the city of Paris. Inevitably, Furst's heroes sooner or later pass through Paris.

Alan Furst's greatest skill perhaps lies in his ability to create an all-pervasive sense of Europe caught between the terrors of facism and Stalinism. "Night Soldiers" takes us from Bulgaria to the Soviet Union to Civil War Spain to France to Eastern Europe again. Mostly the story is seen through the eyes of Khristo Stoianev, initially a Bulgarian lad recruited into the Soviet NKVD, eventually a spy, a criminal, and a partisan. The emphasis is not on spy-thriller type "action" (although "Night Soldiers" does contain a healthy dose) as much as it is on covert operational technique (for which Furst's work deserves very high marks for authenticity). It may be that the book is a little overly ambitious, with Stoianev becoming ensnarled into an improbably broad range of events in several countries, but it provides an absorbing portrait of a continent gone mad.

59 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, engaging read!, January 1, 2003

By 

Curtis Grindahl (San Anselmo, California USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Night Soldiers: A Novel (Paperback)

Night Soldiers is one of Alan Furst's longer novels, a fact that was most pleasing to me as I was carried along by the compelling story. I encountered him a few years ago in my never ending search for new authors of espionage/intrigue stories and have read all but his most recent novel. Reading other reviews I'm reminded that Mr. Furst approaches this genre much as Eric Ambler did, taking ordinary people and putting them in extraordinary circumstances. But as much as I've enjoyed Mr. Ambler's work, I find Alan Furst's writing more nuanced. He exhibits the skill of the finest writers in his evocation of place. I was transported over and over again into the world he created with his words. I appreciate the fact he brings his readers into locales not often explored in this genre. We visit Bulgaria and Spain in this book and Hungary/Poland in the Polish Officer. And his presentation of pre-war Paris is magical. As a student of history I am especially fond of writers who give me a grounded experience of both time and place. Alan Furst does both extremely well. If you haven't read him, do. If you have, you surely need no encouragement to read more. (If you like Alan Furst, you might want to check out Robert Littell whose most recent book is Company - a Novel of the CIA.)

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric thriller for all who enjoy spy novels..., April 16, 2003

By 

Andrew Mendelssohn (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night Soldiers: A Novel (Paperback)

For those of you unfamiliar with Alan Furst, he currently writes espionage thrillers set in Europe between the mid-1930's thru WWII. I say currently because Furst did write some earlier novels unrelated to this, but most people know him for his WWII era spy novels, of which Night Soldiers is the first.
Another feature of Furst's novels is that no matter where they start or end, all of the books wander thru Paris at one time or another... and not just the City of Lights and Romance, but the dark underside of Paris also. Furst also likes the have some consistency between his later books, so usually there will be one character who will apppear again in another book, perhaps with a different face...
Night Soldiers is the story of Khristo Stoianev. The story begins in Bulgaria of the 1930's. Khristo has the misfortune of watching his brother killed by local fascists. After this, he himself is marked and so it is with some convenience that a Soviet agent recruits him to go to the Soviet Union. Khristo undergoes training at a KGB school for foreigners, and makes contacts that will follow him through the book. He also has early exposure to the mindless horror of the purges...
From the Soviet Union Khristo goes to Spain... and from Spain to Furst's stylized pre-war Paris. Unfortunately, to say more would be to spoil too much of the plot. Khristo's story wanders through WWII: the plot twists, turns, and is sometimes a little farfetched but is always exceptionally well written, atmospheric and engaging. Furst occasionally will make a small historical error but its never enough to interfere with enjoying the read.
I've read all of Furst's WWII books, and Night Soldiers was my absolute favorite. I was tempted to give it a four stars because of few small historical errors but I'll stick with five! Don't take the history as absolute gospel but enjoy the book as you would a few hours watching Casablanca. It really is the same type of experience.