Jasper Fforde
Three separate interviews in which Jasper Fforde discusses the Thursday Next series, his Nursery Crime novels and Shades of Grey, the first in a trilogy set in a future world recognizable as our own - but only just.
Abraham Verghese
An interview with Abraham Verghese about his life and writing and in particular about his extraordinary 2009 novel Cutting for Stone, set in 1960s and '70s Ethiopia and 1980s New York.
Martha A Sandweiss
An interview with Martha Sandweiss in which she discusses her book Passing Strange, a biography of Clarence King who lived a double life—as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter named James Todd, married to Ada with whom he had five children.
Amy Greene
Amy Greene talks about her first novel, Bloodroot, which brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life.
Often compared to Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, Alan Furst is widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel. He is the author
of Night Soldiers, Dark Star, The Polish Officer, The
World at Night, Red Gold, and Kingdom of Shadows.
Furst
describes the area of his interest as "near history." His novels are set
between 1933–the date of Adolf Hitler's ascent, with the first Stalinist
purges in Moscow coming a year later–and 1945, which saw the end of the war in
Europe. The history of this period is well documented. Furst uses books by
journalists of the time, personal memoirs–some privately
published–autobiographies (many of the prominent individuals of the period
wrote them), war and political histories, and characteristic novels written
during those years.
"But," he says, "there is a lot more"–for example, period newsreels,
magazines, and newspapers, as well as films and music, especially swing and
jazz. "I buy old books," Furst says, "and old maps, and I once bought,
while living in Paris, the photo archive of a French stock house that served
newspapers of Paris during the Occupation, all the prints marked as cleared by
the German censorship." In addition, Furst uses intelligence histories of the
time, many of them by British writers.
Born in New York, Furst has lived for long periods in Paris and in the south of France.
"In
Europe," he says, "the past is still available. I remember a blue neon sign,
in the Eleventh Arrondissement in Paris, that had possibly been there since the
1930s." He recalls that on the French holiday le jour des morts (All Saints'
Day, November 1) it is customary for Parisians to go to the Père Lachaise
Cemetery. "Before the collapse of Polish communism, the Polish émigrés used
to gather at the tomb of Maria Walewska. They would burn rows of votive candles
and play Chopin on a portable stereo. It was always raining on that day, and a
dozen or so Poles would stand there, under black umbrellas, with the music
playing, as a kind of silent protest against the communist regime. The spirit of
this action was history alive–as though the entire past of that country,
conquered again and again, was being brought back to life."
The heroes of Alan Furst's novels include a Bulgarian defector from the Soviet
intelligence service, a foreign correspondent for Pravda, a Polish cartographer
who works for the army general staff, a French producer of gangster films, and a
Hungarian émigré who works with a diplomat at the Hungarian legation in Paris.
"These are characters in novels," Furst says, "but people like them
existed; people like them were courageous people with ordinary lives and, when
the moment came, they acted with bravery and determination. I simply make it
possible for them to tell their stories."
Furst now lives on
Long Island, New York.
This biography was last updated on 06/10/2006.
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