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Book Summary and Reviews of Night Soldiers by Alan Furst

Night Soldiers by Alan Furst

Night Soldiers

by Alan Furst

  • Readers' Rating (4):
  • Published:
  • Jan 1988, 437 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists.

His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates the European world of 1934–45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944. Night Soldiers is a scrupulously researched panoramic novel, a work on a grand scale.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Intelligent and absorbing ... An unusual viewpoint, solid research and unobtrusively elegant writing make this pure pleasure to read." ―Kirkus Reviews

"Evocative, moving ... Furst shows a remarkable talent, 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." ―Publishers Weekly

"One of the very best novels ever written about the inner world of Soviet intelligence... . This fine novel, in effect the memoir so many did not live to write for themselves, is a triumph of historical imagination." ―Thomas Powers, author of The Man Who Kept the Secrets

This information about Night Soldiers was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Alan Furst

Alan Furst, widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel, is the author of A Hero of France, Midnight in Europe, Mission to Paris, and many other bestsellers. Born in New York, he lived for many years in Paris, and now lives on Long Island.

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