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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2006, 288 pages
Paperback:
May 2007, 288 pages
From the Jacket:
The Foreign Correspondent is set in the perilous period of transition
before the outbreak of World War II, when
hundreds of Italian intellectuals and
journalists fled to Paris. As they formed
resistance groups and founded clandestine
newspapers, spies from nations friendly and
hostile moved freely in their midst. Carlo
Weisz doubles as a foreign correspondent for
Reuters, and the editor of an underground
antifascist newspaper. But even his cover
job offers no security: In these dangerous
times, any journalist is fair game.
Comment: Furst's latest story is
inspired by a real-life group of Italian
exiles, the giellisti (adherents to the
anti-Fascist Giustizia e Liberta party) who
fled Italy following the arrest of many of
their group on the orders of Mussolini, and
for a time, published an
underground newspaper in Paris which was then
smuggled back into Italy.
On the whole, the reviews of The Foreign Correspondent are positive.
Booklist and Publishers Weekly both admire
it sufficiently to award it starred review
status. However, The Globe and Mail are a
little more critical (or at least a little
more cynical), opining that it is amazing
that, in addition to holding down two
demanding jobs and ghost-writing an
autobiography of a famous Spaniard, our lead
protagonist still has "the wherewithal to
read Malraux, witness the invasion of
Czechoslovakia and the forging of the
so-called Pact of Steel, as well as to make
love to an attractive English spy ... an
insouciant Parisian gallery owner; and a
German woman, the love of his life .... who
is also involved with a group determined to
depose Hitler." The exhausted reviewer sums
up with the tongue in cheek comment: "It
certainly puts those of us who can't keep up
with American Idol from one week to
the next on notice that we're not living up
to our full potential."
Perhaps Kirkus Reviews sums things up best
with its oh so true closing remark, "Who knows
why this stuff is so deeply satisfying? But
it most surely is."
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2006, and has been updated for the
May 2007 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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