The Adventures of Chester: Interview with Alan Furst

I've conducted a brief interview with Alan Furst, who has written several superb spy novels set in pre-WWII Europe. The interview is now up over at TCSDaily.

Furst's own site is www.alanfurst.net.

I have to tell the story of how this came about, cause it's pretty neat.

Mrs. Chester dragged me shopping one day and I ducked into a Borders in need of a reprieve. Browsing around, I moseyed over to the Mystery/Suspense section to look for Furst's new book, The Foreign Correspondent.

I couldn't find it, so I went to the help desk. There, I saw a stack of copies, along with the entire inventory of everything else they had in stock by Furst. "Are these all on hold?" I asked the staff. "No, we've set them aside because he's supposed to come in today and sign them. He's supposed to be here any minute."

Well, this was cool! So soon enough Mr. Furst did arrive and signed a copy for me. I went and sat down in the cafe. Then a thought occurred to me: why not a blog interview? I asked him and he agreed immediately, saying he loves reading blogs.

Anyway, I thought that was very kind of him and a pretty cool little backstory.

Furst's novels are truly fascinating. You feel as though you are really in Europe right before all hell breaks loose. And in some cases after it's broken loose too.

My favorite is Night Soldiers, probably because it's a bit longer than the others, which means all the more intrigue:

I've also read The World at Night and Dark Voyage:

Those were both excellent as well. When reading these works, the scope and depth of the changes that were afoot in Europe really begins to dawn on the reader. Most interestingly perhaps is that everyone seems to know that war is coming . . .

Loyal Readers here at Adventures will probably enjoy any of Furst's novels. Go check out the interview too.

UPDATE: Here's a previous post that references his work as well: Through The Looking Glass.

Posted by Chester on August 9, 2006 7:27 AM to The Adventures of Chester