Foreign Correspondent

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

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

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

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

I have now read most of the Night Soldiers series of books and think they are quite good. I am not suggesting that they are quite up to the Le Carre, but I like the historical insights into this period of time and learned a great deal about the Balkans and pre-war Europe. Some characters are introduced in one book and reappear in others, which I like. It would be nice to have a chart of who is in what book! Overall a very good read, exciting and full of historical interest. Wish I could go 4 and 1/2 stars.

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

Somehow this failed to take me to time and place as all others in the series. Perhaps there are fewer descriptions of places and rooms. Perhaps fewer build ups to fear of Germans spying and threatening. I’m not sure what I missed but I was never “there” as I had been in all Furst books. He is a greAt favourite of mine and so I felt a bit let d o an

“The Foreign Correspondent” was my second novel by Alan Furst. In the days leading up to World War II, a foreign correspondent working in Paris, Carlo Weisz, an Italian ex-pat is sucked into dangerous sitations and adventures in espionage. One of the things I liked was how Furst is able to maintain maximum suspense without a lot of overt violence–but the dark threat of violence is always present. Furst writes believable scenes set in Spain, France, Italy and Germany. The reader can feel the inevitability of the war, and the events leading up to it. The minor characters are well drawn, especially Colonel Ferrara, the Spanish Civil war veteran. Furst writes evocative scenes of pre-war Paris with all the political factions jockeying for position. If you enjoy The Foreign Correspondent, you may also like the Polish Officer and Furst’s other novels.

The Polish Officer: A Novel

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