The Foreign Correspondent

From Alan Furst, whom The New York Times calls "America's preeminent spynovelist," comes an epic story of romantic love, love of country, and loveof freedom-the story of a secret war fought in elegant hotel bars andfirst-class railway cars, in the mountains of Spain and the backstreets ofBerlin. It is an inspiring, thrilling saga of everyday people forced bytheir hearts' passion to fight in the war against tyranny. By 1938,hundreds of Italian intellectuals, lawyers and journalists, universityprofessors and scientists had escaped Mussolini's fascist government andtaken refuge in Paris. There, amid the struggles of e;migre; life, theyfounded an Italian resistance, with an underground press that smugglednews and encouragement back to Italy. Fighting fascism with typewriters,they produced 512 clandestine newspapers. The Foreign Correspondent istheir story. Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreetlovers' hotel. But this is no romantic traged-it is the work of the OVRA,Mussolini's fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor ofLiberazione, a clandestine e;migre; newspaper. Carlo Weisz, who has fledfrom Trieste and secured a job as a foreign correspondent with the Reutersbureau, becomes the new editor. Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain,reporting on the last campaign of the Spanish civil war. But as soon as hereturns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Sűrete;, by agents of theOVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In thedesperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondentis a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or murder. The ForeignCorrespondent is the story of Carlo Weisz and a handful of antifascists:the army officer known as "Colonel Ferrara," who fights for a lost causein Spain; Arturo Salamone, the shrewd leader of a resistance group inParis; and Christa von Schirren, the woman who becomes the love of Weisz'slife, herself involved in a doomed resistance underground in Berlin. TheForeign Correspondent is Alan Furst at his absolute best-taut andpowerful, enigmatic and romantic, with sharp, seductive writing that takesthe reader through darkness and intrigue to a spectacular denouement.