Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The Foreign Correspondent

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The Foreign Correspondent

Alan Furst has been compared to Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, and is considered by many to be 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, Kingdom of Shadows and The Foreign Correspondent.

Furst describes the area of his interest as "near history." His novels are set between 1933 and 1945, from Adolf Hitler's ascent, with the first Stalinist purges in Moscow coming a year later, to the end of the war in Europe. Because the history of this period is so well documented, Furst has ample access to books by journalists of the time, personal memoirs, autobiographies (many of the prominent individuals of the period wrote an autobiography), war and political histories, and characteristic novels written during those years.

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This "beyond the book article" relates to The Foreign Correspondent. It originally ran in June 2006 and has been updated for the May 2007 paperback edition. Go to magazine.