Night Soldiers

By: Alan Furst

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.

In Vidin, Bulgaria, where the flow of the river Danube has always brought thieves and conquerors, Khristo Stoianev witnesses his younger brother kicked to death by fascist militia. These are simple men of a backwater town, costumed in fresh uniforms emblazoned with a flaming cross insignia. But behind their barbaric actions stands the swastika.

From the terror-plagued Balkans, Khristo, a virgin in the ways of the outside world, is drawn east, toward Moscow and a new life as a Soviet spy.

©1988 Alan Furst (P)2004 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Furst shows a remarkable talent in his fifth novel, integrating details about the cultures of Spain, France and Eastern Europe with a fascinating story." (Publishers Weekly)
"Night Soldiers has everything the best thrillers offer, excitement, intrigue, romance, plus grown-up writing, characters that matter, and a crisp, carefully researched portrait of the period in which our own postwar world was shaped." (USA Today)
"Intelligent, ambitious, absorbing....The history is deftly incorporated; the viewpoint civilized; the characters and the settings picturesque; the adventures exciting; the writing pungent." (The New York Times)

Incredible stitching of storylines

Well written and performed spy film with incredible subtleties that surface naturally. Keeps you on your toes!

Interesting descriptions

I really like this narrator, he brings the story to life. I did have a hard time following the complex plot and the different subplots but still a great listen.

Not One Of My Faves

I found this story laborious and boring at times. The narrator did a great job with what he had to work with, and his French pronunciations were excellent. There was too much minutiae in this story for me so I can't recommend it as a thriller. It's more of a long, drawn out saga.

Extremely impressive...if not especially enjoyable

In fact, I found most of the characters and events downright unpleasant -- which is why I'm so conflicted, as Furst's writing is astonishingly good: wise, graceful, lyrical... One also comes away with the impression that he writes with absolute authority about the war, spycraft, Balkan history, the Spanish Civil War, Stalin's intelligence service, wartime Paris, rural France, the French Resistance, 1940s Manhattan, refugees, guns, engines, river navigation... I don't know how much here (and presumably in his many later novels) depends upon years of painstaking research and how much is the product of his imagination, but I certainly felt I was learning a great deal about the Second World War (and more than I cared to about the brutal, paranoid, treacherous world of the Soviets), with authentic atmosphere, detail, and background.

The downside? A rambling, episodic, somewhat hard-to-follow story -- not exactly a plot, really, more a picaresque odyssey with various grim adventures in assorted European locales, and minor characters who are introduced, perform for a while, and then generally disappear forever. The adventures and the new locales and characters keep coming; I was not sorry when the saga finally ended.

Another drawback (for me): a tough, shrewd main character I found hard to like and impossible to warm to, though one is clearly meant to root for him. He is just too damned wise, savvy, resourceful, and quick-witted to be likable. And others in the novel are too wise as well. In particular, I noticed that every time characters open their mouths, they come out with something too pithily clever and colorful to be believed, speaking in elaborate metaphors, bits of folk wisdom, cynical jests, ruminations on history, etc. They remind me of the colorful minor characters in Preston Sturges comedies; no one ever utters anything dull or unmemorable. Granted, colorful dialogue is to be prized, but these people and their talk become tiresome.

Despite these reservations, I'll probably end up listening to further novels of Furst's, in part because they seem to offer vivid, realistic glimpses of a world, and an era, that interests me. But the main thing that will likely keep me coming back for more is George Guidall's narration. I don't know how he does it (because I gather veteran readers like him essentially get by with sight reading, encountering a text for the first time as they read it aloud), but he manages to bring drama and intelligence to every line.

This book is a gift.

It's "Huckleberry Finn" on the Danube and in WWII. A breathtaking sprawl of a book. This spy/war/history/poetic and sensual book anticipates today's tribal breakdowns in the midst of western human rights expansions. The plot is dense and I had to listen again and again to tease out the thread of continuity, but that let me also te-hear and enjoy the beauty of landscape and cold and conflicting human urges. What a book!

Plot, characters, history, everything

This novel is so different from almost anything I've read in the genre. Better prose than le Carre, Complex but utterly believable plot. Pacing--oh my goodness. And all this without losing the characters, in particular that of Khristo Stoianev. He is amazingly deft at weaving in the historic background, as well. And, a blessing, while his vision of the world, at least the world of this novel, is bleak, the humans in it are not so utterly without the capacity of redemption as to be unbelievable on that side of the ledger. It can seem as if hope for all but one or two humans in any given group as become literarily incorrect. Not so for this writer.

Another outstanding tale

It is difficult to describe how excellent this book is. It absolutely swept me away to another time and place. And the narration was pure perfection.

Dreary, but that might be the point

That is possibly not fair, it is 'muddy' and it does 'drudge' but the subject is a molasses topic and so I guess it was always heading in that direction. It works but it deosn't grab.

Waited a long time for something to happen

This story has so many characters, side plots, and is so convoluted that it is very hard to follow. I found myself waiting for the main plot and action to develop, but felt like it never did.

Can Furst write faster?

I am running out of Allen Furst books to read!!