Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Jun 2008
288 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
Alan Furst delivers a stunning, action-packed new novel of espionage and dangerous liasions set in Warsaw, Silesia and Paris. The hero is a French aristocrat working as a military attache at the French embassy in Warsaw in 1937. Amidst formal banquets at Warsaw Hotels, cocktail parties at the Foreign Office, and the looming shadow of war with Germany, spies try to gather information for Poland and France, wondering what move Germany will make next. Romantic sparks fly between the French aristocrat's cousin and a Franco-Polish woman who works as a lawyer for The League of Nations, all against the backdrop of Hitler's gathering war.
"Starred Review. Furst brilliantly captures the setting, along with the cynicism of the Warsaw sociopolitical scene. Enthusiastically recommended" - Library Journal.
"Starred Review. As ever, Furst excels at creating plausible characters and in conveying the mostly tedious routines of real espionage." - Publishers Weekly.
"Furst cuts back a bit on the usual tension, but there is all of the wonderfully wistful late-'30s atmosphere that is his specialty." - Kirkus Reviews.
This information about The Spies of Warsaw shown above was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. In most cases, 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 the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
© Shonna Valeska
Alan Furst was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. An only child with older parents, he wandered alone or with friends around New York and learned to love the city and its people. He attended Oberlin College, mistakenly majoring in English, too late discovering anthropology, the proper major for a writer. After graduating, he drove a taxi in New York and wrote poetry, eventually finding work as a teaching assistant in English at the Pennsylvania State University, which led to an MA, a never-to-be-finished PhD, and a Fulbright teaching fellowship at the Université de Montpellier in southern France.
Returning to America, he went to Seattle, wanting to be away from the East Coast. In Seattle, he wrote copy for ad agencies, a well-paid freelancer supported by creative ...
The Widow Queen
by Elzbieta Cherezinska
The epic story of an 11th century Polish queen whose life and name were all but forgotten until now.
Reader Reviews
Of Women and Salt
by Gabriela Garcia
A kaleidoscopic portrait of generations of women from a 19th-century Cuban cigar factory to the present day.
Reader Reviews
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020
"Stunning.… A timely family saga with faith and forgiveness at its core."
―Marie Claire
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
