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A review by plantbirdwoman
Night Soldiers by Alan Furst
4.0
"In Bulgaria, in 1934, on a muddy street in the river town of Vidin, Khristo Stoianev saw his brother kicked to death by fascist militia." So begins Alan Furst's 1988 novel, Night Soldiers. It was the defining moment of Khristo's life and all the events of the next 450+ pages and 11 years proceed from that moment.
The 19-year-old Khristo is recruited by a Russian for the U.S.S.R.'s intelligence service N.K.V.D. He becomes a trained intelligence operative and in the process bonds with a few of his fellow trainees. This bonding will become a very important factor in Khristo's story later on.
He is sent to Spain, where he is ordered to kill his anti-Franco comrades because they are anarchists, not Communists. He runs away from his Soviet handlers, to France, where he is caught up in the German invasion. He experiences a brief interlude of love with a woman named Aleksandra, but then she is made to disappear by the long arm of the N.K.V.D. Khristo moves on again to Eastern Europe where he serves Western spymasters, even as World War II begins to wind down.
This is a complicated story with a plot which twists back upon itself at regular intervals. Characters appear and, before we really get to know them, they disappear. The edginess, the uncertainty of whom to trust, the constant threat of sudden death all seem very authentic to the atmosphere of the times. At least as much as someone almost 80 years removed from those events can judge authenticity.
The story is absorbing and it builds, episode by episode, until the best which comes last when Khristo makes his way back up the Danube into lands now coming under Soviet control in order to rescue a buddy from his training days, one of those he had bonded with ten years before.
Furst brushes the dust off the past and makes it crackle with life once again. He weaves many actual historical events and details into his stories and makes it all appear seamlessly incorporated. Hard to say where reality ends and fiction begins here. His heroes are always humanistic and represent the civilized viewpoint. Their overwhelming trait is always their simple decency and their opposition to brutes, whether they be Fascist or Communist. That heroic profile fits Khristo Stoianev like a glove.
The 19-year-old Khristo is recruited by a Russian for the U.S.S.R.'s intelligence service N.K.V.D. He becomes a trained intelligence operative and in the process bonds with a few of his fellow trainees. This bonding will become a very important factor in Khristo's story later on.
He is sent to Spain, where he is ordered to kill his anti-Franco comrades because they are anarchists, not Communists. He runs away from his Soviet handlers, to France, where he is caught up in the German invasion. He experiences a brief interlude of love with a woman named Aleksandra, but then she is made to disappear by the long arm of the N.K.V.D. Khristo moves on again to Eastern Europe where he serves Western spymasters, even as World War II begins to wind down.
This is a complicated story with a plot which twists back upon itself at regular intervals. Characters appear and, before we really get to know them, they disappear. The edginess, the uncertainty of whom to trust, the constant threat of sudden death all seem very authentic to the atmosphere of the times. At least as much as someone almost 80 years removed from those events can judge authenticity.
The story is absorbing and it builds, episode by episode, until the best which comes last when Khristo makes his way back up the Danube into lands now coming under Soviet control in order to rescue a buddy from his training days, one of those he had bonded with ten years before.
Furst brushes the dust off the past and makes it crackle with life once again. He weaves many actual historical events and details into his stories and makes it all appear seamlessly incorporated. Hard to say where reality ends and fiction begins here. His heroes are always humanistic and represent the civilized viewpoint. Their overwhelming trait is always their simple decency and their opposition to brutes, whether they be Fascist or Communist. That heroic profile fits Khristo Stoianev like a glove.