
Dark Star
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $25.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
George Guidall
-
By:
-
Alan Furst
About this listen
Acclaimed author and historian Alan Furst has written several historical fiction novels, such as Blood of Victory and Kingdom of Shadows. In Dark Star, André Szara is a Polish journalist who becomes a spy for the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. Through Szara’s character, the beginnings of World War II are revealed.
Some of the events Szara sees are harsh and unforgettable. While working in Austria, he sees Hitler and his army march into Vienna and drag Jews into the streets, humiliating and beating them—often to death. Szara turns to drinking to help numb much of his pain as he finds a reliable confidant in Germany who is willing to give him undisclosed information about the war.
Listen to Alan Furst discuss his craft with fellow writers Walter Mosley and Scott Turow at©1991 Alan Furst (P)2004 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.
-
-
Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
-
The Foreign Correspondent
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Alfred Molina
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers' hotel. But this is no romantic tragedy, it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini's fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine emigre newspaper. Carlo Weisz, a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor.
-
-
Did I miss something?
- By Rebecca on 08-29-06
By: Alan Furst
-
Dark Voyage
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
May, 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter streams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa; she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo.
-
-
Not enough of a good thing
- By David on 11-26-04
By: Alan Furst
-
Under Occupation
- A Novel
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this thrilling historical spy novel from New York Times best-selling author Alan Furst, two heroic resistance fighters smuggle valuable information to occupied Paris to turn the tide of the World War II and defeat Nazi Germany.
-
-
Awful
- By Hernan Navarro on 01-21-20
By: Alan Furst
-
The Best of Our Spies
- Spy Masters, Book 1
- By: Alex Gerlis
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 15 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
France, July 1944: a month after the Allied landings in Normandy, and the liberation of Europe is under way. In the Pas-de-Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband, Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day.
-
-
The Best Kind of Spy Story
- By Linda Hanson on 01-11-16
By: Alex Gerlis
-
The Secret Hours
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service “to investigate historical over-reaching.” Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn.
-
-
Just about perfect
- By June Lapidow on 09-28-23
By: Mick Herron
-
Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.
-
-
Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
-
The Foreign Correspondent
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Alfred Molina
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers' hotel. But this is no romantic tragedy, it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini's fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine emigre newspaper. Carlo Weisz, a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor.
-
-
Did I miss something?
- By Rebecca on 08-29-06
By: Alan Furst
-
Dark Voyage
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
May, 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter streams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa; she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo.
-
-
Not enough of a good thing
- By David on 11-26-04
By: Alan Furst
-
Under Occupation
- A Novel
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this thrilling historical spy novel from New York Times best-selling author Alan Furst, two heroic resistance fighters smuggle valuable information to occupied Paris to turn the tide of the World War II and defeat Nazi Germany.
-
-
Awful
- By Hernan Navarro on 01-21-20
By: Alan Furst
-
The Best of Our Spies
- Spy Masters, Book 1
- By: Alex Gerlis
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 15 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
France, July 1944: a month after the Allied landings in Normandy, and the liberation of Europe is under way. In the Pas-de-Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband, Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day.
-
-
The Best Kind of Spy Story
- By Linda Hanson on 01-11-16
By: Alex Gerlis
-
The Secret Hours
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service “to investigate historical over-reaching.” Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn.
-
-
Just about perfect
- By June Lapidow on 09-28-23
By: Mick Herron
-
The Berlin Exchange
- A Novel
- By: Joseph Kanon
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Berlin, 1963. An early morning spy swap, not at the familiar setting for such exchanges, nor at Checkpoint Charlie, where international visitors cross into the East, but at a more discreet border crossing, usually reserved for East German VIPs. The Communists are trading two American students caught helping people to escape over the wall and an aging MI6 operative. On the other side of the trade: Martin Keller, a physicist who once made headlines, but who then disappeared into the English prison system.
-
-
A fabulous thriller. As good as LeCarre
- By Rosemary Wells on 04-02-22
By: Joseph Kanon
-
Prince of Spies
- The Richard Prince Thrillers, Book 1
- By: Alex Gerlis
- Narrated by: Rupert Bush
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1942: a German spy comes ashore on a desolate stretch of Lincolnshire beach. But he is hunted down by a young detective, Richard Prince. The secret services have need of a man like him.... In occupied Europe, Denmark is a hotbed of problems for British intelligence. Rumours of a war-ending weapon being developed by the Germans are rife. Sent to Copenhagen, Prince is soon caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Dodging Gestapo agents, SS muscle and the danger of betrayal, his survival - and the war effort - hangs in the balance.
-
-
Ending?
- By T Smith on 02-24-21
By: Alex Gerlis
-
The Start
- 1904-1930
- By: William L. Shirer
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 22 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
William L. Shirer was a CBS foreign correspondent and renowned author of New York Times best-selling nonfiction about World War II, and this is the first part of his three-part autobiography. A renowned journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer chronicles his own life story in a personal history that parallels the greater historical events for which he served as a witness.
-
-
Clouds gathering on the horizon in Europe
- By Nancy on 08-12-20
-
An Officer and a Spy
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris in 1895: Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer, has just been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil's Island, and stripped of his rank in front of a baying crowd of 20,000. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, the ambitious, intellectual, recently promoted head of the counterespionage agency that Dreyfus had passed secrets to the Germans. At first, Picquart firmly believes in Dreyfus' guilt. But it is not long after Dreyfus is delivered to his desolate prison that Picquart stumbles on information that leads him to suspect that there is still a spy at large in the French military.
-
-
Top Notch Historical Fiction
- By Ryan on 03-18-14
By: Robert Harris
-
The Kill Artist
- By: Daniel Silva
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After the assassination of his wife and son, Gabriel Allon retires from his brutal anti-terrorist career and loses himself in his previous cover job: art restoration. But when Tariq al-Hourani, the Palestinian terrorist responsible for his family’s death, begins a killing spree designed to destroy Middle East peace talks, Gabriel once again slips into the shadowy world of international intrigue. In a global game of hide-and-seek, the motives of Gabriel and Tariq soon become more personal than political.
-
-
Reluctant Assassin
- By Snoodely on 10-30-13
By: Daniel Silva
-
The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
-
-
Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
-
The Winds of War
- By: Herman Wouk
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 45 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers. Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - and all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.
-
-
A Masterpiece
- By Robert on 05-24-13
By: Herman Wouk
-
Act of Oblivion
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: Tim McInnerny
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1660 England. General Edward Whalley and his son-in law Colonel William Goffe board a ship bound for the New World. They are on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I—a brazen execution that marked the culmination of the English Civil War, in which parliamentarians successfully battled royalists for control.
-
-
I've loved Robert Harris' Books; but...
- By Lucy on 10-16-22
By: Robert Harris
-
Xenos
- Eisenhorn: Warhammer 40,000, Book 1
- By: Dan Abnett
- Narrated by: Toby Longworth
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Inquisition moves amongst mankind like an avenging shadow, striking down the enemies of humanity with uncompromising ruthlessness. When he finally corners an old foe, Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn is drawn into a sinister conspiracy. As events unfold and he gathers allies - and enemies - Eisenhorn faces a vast interstellar cabal and the dark power of daemons, all racing to recover an arcane text of abominable power: an ancient tome known as the Necroteuch.
-
-
No one expects the Imperial Inquisition!
- By Charlie M. on 11-13-17
By: Dan Abnett
-
Niagara Falls All Over Again
- By: Elizabeth McCracken
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sometimes in life, opposites are drawn to each other; somehow, each providing the other with something they don't have, but desperately need. National Book Award finalist Elizabeth McCracken pens this graceful, moving tale of an unlikely pairing of two men and their lifelong partnership in show business.
-
-
A Keeper!
- By Steven on 11-17-04
-
A Coffin for Dimitrios
- By: Eric Ambler
- Narrated by: Alexander Spencer
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An early classic of espionage fiction. Through the cafés, trains and nighttime cities of Europe, Charles Latimer follows a twisting trail of drug-smugglers, thieves and assassins that will lead him to Dimitrios.
-
-
Raymond Chandler of European espionage fiction
- By Darwin8u on 06-07-14
By: Eric Ambler
-
The Unlikely Spy
- By: Daniel Silva
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“In wartime,” Winston Churchill wrote, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” For Britain’s counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable - a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent.
-
-
The Unlikely Spy
- By Margaret on 12-14-09
By: Daniel Silva
Critic reviews
"Intelligent, provocative, and gripping novel....Beautifully and compellingly told." (Publishers Weekly)
"A rich, deeply moving novel of suspense that is equal parts espionage thriller, European history, and love story." (The New York Times)
"Captures the murky allegiances and moral ambiguity of Europe on the brink of war....Nothing can be like watching Casablanca for the first time. But Furst comes closer than anyone has in years." (Time)
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.
-
-
Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
-
Under Occupation
- A Novel
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this thrilling historical spy novel from New York Times best-selling author Alan Furst, two heroic resistance fighters smuggle valuable information to occupied Paris to turn the tide of the World War II and defeat Nazi Germany.
-
-
Awful
- By Hernan Navarro on 01-21-20
By: Alan Furst
-
The Foreign Correspondent
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Alfred Molina
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers' hotel. But this is no romantic tragedy, it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini's fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine emigre newspaper. Carlo Weisz, a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor.
-
-
Did I miss something?
- By Rebecca on 08-29-06
By: Alan Furst
-
Prince of Spies
- The Richard Prince Thrillers, Book 1
- By: Alex Gerlis
- Narrated by: Rupert Bush
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1942: a German spy comes ashore on a desolate stretch of Lincolnshire beach. But he is hunted down by a young detective, Richard Prince. The secret services have need of a man like him.... In occupied Europe, Denmark is a hotbed of problems for British intelligence. Rumours of a war-ending weapon being developed by the Germans are rife. Sent to Copenhagen, Prince is soon caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Dodging Gestapo agents, SS muscle and the danger of betrayal, his survival - and the war effort - hangs in the balance.
-
-
Ending?
- By T Smith on 02-24-21
By: Alex Gerlis
-
Dark Voyage
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
May, 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter streams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa; she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo.
-
-
Not enough of a good thing
- By David on 11-26-04
By: Alan Furst
-
The Confidential Agent
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Patrick Tull
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Trusted by no one, trusting nobody, the Confidential Agent is sent to England. But before his mission has barely begun, he comes face to face with an agent from the other side. As the car he is driving is run down in the fog, a thought strikes him: "It isn't probable - not in England, but it seems to be true, nonetheless - they're going to kill me."
-
-
approach it as a fable
- By connie on 10-18-08
By: Graham Greene
-
Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.
-
-
Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
-
Under Occupation
- A Novel
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this thrilling historical spy novel from New York Times best-selling author Alan Furst, two heroic resistance fighters smuggle valuable information to occupied Paris to turn the tide of the World War II and defeat Nazi Germany.
-
-
Awful
- By Hernan Navarro on 01-21-20
By: Alan Furst
-
The Foreign Correspondent
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Alfred Molina
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers' hotel. But this is no romantic tragedy, it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini's fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine emigre newspaper. Carlo Weisz, a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor.
-
-
Did I miss something?
- By Rebecca on 08-29-06
By: Alan Furst
-
Prince of Spies
- The Richard Prince Thrillers, Book 1
- By: Alex Gerlis
- Narrated by: Rupert Bush
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1942: a German spy comes ashore on a desolate stretch of Lincolnshire beach. But he is hunted down by a young detective, Richard Prince. The secret services have need of a man like him.... In occupied Europe, Denmark is a hotbed of problems for British intelligence. Rumours of a war-ending weapon being developed by the Germans are rife. Sent to Copenhagen, Prince is soon caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Dodging Gestapo agents, SS muscle and the danger of betrayal, his survival - and the war effort - hangs in the balance.
-
-
Ending?
- By T Smith on 02-24-21
By: Alex Gerlis
-
Dark Voyage
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
May, 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter streams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa; she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo.
-
-
Not enough of a good thing
- By David on 11-26-04
By: Alan Furst
-
The Confidential Agent
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Patrick Tull
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Trusted by no one, trusting nobody, the Confidential Agent is sent to England. But before his mission has barely begun, he comes face to face with an agent from the other side. As the car he is driving is run down in the fog, a thought strikes him: "It isn't probable - not in England, but it seems to be true, nonetheless - they're going to kill me."
-
-
approach it as a fable
- By connie on 10-18-08
By: Graham Greene
A Treasure
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
leading to World War II. Very well read with good pace and characters portrayal.
Interesting historical fiction.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
great Book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Terrific historical fiction
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Profoundly well presented sense of the beginning of WW II
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Incredibly engaging and literate.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved it!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
awesome story. well read.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Intriguing and complex story line
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
As a protagonist, Szara was great. His little side jobs for the NKVD became much more than he bargained for, but he handled it with expertise he didn’t know he had. He’s vaguely romantic in the sense that he has fought in wars and is a widower due to those same wars (the fact that his wife was a nurse makes it even more romantic). He’s got a good head on his shoulders and keeps his cool under fire. He’s not idealistic; he’s trying to do the best he can in a situation he can’t control. He’s shrewd but not cruelly manipulative. A good guy in a bad circumstance is the overall impression and I was glad how things ended for him even if it was so different from how most other espionage novels end.
I also liked how the overall plot wasn’t some gigantic, war-changing operation that was so vitally important as to make all other considerations meaningless. Instead it was a very localized operation moved along by relatively junior personnel. Maybe that’s what lent the feeling of futility to the story. This minor sideline wasn’t going to change anything and so the sense of time wasted, lives wasted was pretty strong for me. After all the plotting, betrayal and bloodshed the information was really not as hard to come by as Szara thought and so what good did it all do? That’s the feeling of futility and doom that pervaded for me throughout, but especially at the end when I got a horrible deflated feeling.
I did like the small sphere Furst gave us though. Through his descriptions of bombings, life as a refugee and as ‘burnt’ spy desperate for a new identity and way to safety, I really felt how trapped and hopeless it was for those people caught by it. It was very quotidian and not over the top and thus much more believable. I could easily imagine people going through with and attempting similar things to Szara. Small cogs just trying to get by. It was touching and somehow familiar although I wonder if they still make people who could do what these did. The absolute audacity of the German regime and the utter passivity of the rest of Europe (well, that’s how it came across in this novel anyway) was pretty shocking. I mean, I understand wanting to keep out of someone else’s fight, but what the hell did they think was happening to these people as they were marginalized, shut out and shipped from one place to another? Unthinkable, but it happened.
Small-sphere spying at its best
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.