Dark Star

De: Alan Furst

Narrado por: George Guidall

Acclaimed author and historian Alan Furst has written several historical fiction novels, such as Blood of Victory and Kingdom of Shadows. In Dark Star, André Szara is a Polish journalist who becomes a spy for the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. Through Szara’s character, the beginnings of World War II are revealed.

Some of the events Szara sees are harsh and unforgettable. While working in Austria, he sees Hitler and his army march into Vienna and drag Jews into the streets, humiliating and beating them—often to death. Szara turns to drinking to help numb much of his pain as he finds a reliable confidant in Germany who is willing to give him undisclosed information about the war.

Listen to Alan Furst discuss his craft with fellow writers Walter Mosley and Scott Turow at©1991 Alan Furst (P)2004 Recorded Books

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Intelligent, provocative, and gripping novel....Beautifully and compellingly told." (Publishers Weekly)
"A rich, deeply moving novel of suspense that is equal parts espionage thriller, European history, and love story." (The New York Times)
"Captures the murky allegiances and moral ambiguity of Europe on the brink of war....Nothing can be like watching Casablanca for the first time. But Furst comes closer than anyone has in years." (Time)

A Treasure

One of spy fiction's best performed by the best. WWII fiction doesn't get any better

Interesting historical fiction.

An interesting perspective on the events
leading to World War II. Very well read with good pace and characters portrayal.

great Book

Could have had a more complete conclusion.. in my opinion. Not so much for the main characters, but for a couple of the story threads.

Terrific historical fiction

I was really pleasantly surprised by this book. I was never sure who to root for--the main character is a Stalinist in the era of the purges and he is spying on the Nazis. There was a lot going on here.

Profoundly well presented sense of the beginning of WW II

It is long, wordy, rich with humour and a sense of the intrigue that led to the beginning of WW II. Spy networks, intrigue and the life of a wanderer in pre-war Europe. Listen in small bits to let it flow slowly.

Incredibly engaging and literate.

Alan Furst remains in a class of his own. His writing is superb. He consistently delivers engaging historical intrigue that avoids gratuitous emotional traps with a frighteningly realistic plot. He honors his readers with a respect for their intelligence, and a literary style one longs for in the work of those who aren't Alan Furst. The audible performance does justice to a class act in espionage story telling.

Loved it!

I love this genre and this book truly satisfied my historical curiosity with a great story to boot. I cannot wait for more from this author.

awesome story. well read.

epic story and sorry when it ends . will have to listen to the whole series now...

Intriguing and complex story line

loved the story, my favorite of the series. the only issue is that von polanyi is German in this story and in all others he is Hungarian. In the Foreign Correspondent Szara meets Carl Weiz at the Brasserie Heiniger along with Polanyi, and the whole crowd, but in this book Szara meets Polanyi when he is rescued from the Gestapo. Usually Furst doesn't make such mistakes.

Small-sphere spying at its best

My first Furst was a success overall, however I don’t know how many more of them I will read. What? How can that be if I say it was a success? Well, it was more the feeling of the inevitable and the futility of it all that I had while reading. 70 years after World War II it’s tough to really suspend one’s disbelief during a spy story and pretend we don’t know how things turned out. Even though Szara was thoroughly engaging and human, fought on the ‘right’ side of things and went about his task with a grim instinct for his role, I still felt pangs of ‘what is it all for?’.

As a protagonist, Szara was great. His little side jobs for the NKVD became much more than he bargained for, but he handled it with expertise he didn’t know he had. He’s vaguely romantic in the sense that he has fought in wars and is a widower due to those same wars (the fact that his wife was a nurse makes it even more romantic). He’s got a good head on his shoulders and keeps his cool under fire. He’s not idealistic; he’s trying to do the best he can in a situation he can’t control. He’s shrewd but not cruelly manipulative. A good guy in a bad circumstance is the overall impression and I was glad how things ended for him even if it was so different from how most other espionage novels end.

I also liked how the overall plot wasn’t some gigantic, war-changing operation that was so vitally important as to make all other considerations meaningless. Instead it was a very localized operation moved along by relatively junior personnel. Maybe that’s what lent the feeling of futility to the story. This minor sideline wasn’t going to change anything and so the sense of time wasted, lives wasted was pretty strong for me. After all the plotting, betrayal and bloodshed the information was really not as hard to come by as Szara thought and so what good did it all do? That’s the feeling of futility and doom that pervaded for me throughout, but especially at the end when I got a horrible deflated feeling.

I did like the small sphere Furst gave us though. Through his descriptions of bombings, life as a refugee and as ‘burnt’ spy desperate for a new identity and way to safety, I really felt how trapped and hopeless it was for those people caught by it. It was very quotidian and not over the top and thus much more believable. I could easily imagine people going through with and attempting similar things to Szara. Small cogs just trying to get by. It was touching and somehow familiar although I wonder if they still make people who could do what these did. The absolute audacity of the German regime and the utter passivity of the rest of Europe (well, that’s how it came across in this novel anyway) was pretty shocking. I mean, I understand wanting to keep out of someone else’s fight, but what the hell did they think was happening to these people as they were marginalized, shut out and shipped from one place to another? Unthinkable, but it happened.