BookBrowse Reviews The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst

A spy story set among Italian expatriates living in exile in pre-WWII Paris.

From the Jacket: The Foreign Correspondent is set in the perilous period of transition before the outbreak of World War II, when hundreds of Italian intellectuals and journalists fled to Paris. As they formed resistance groups and founded clandestine newspapers, spies from nations friendly and hostile moved freely in their midst. Carlo Weisz doubles as a foreign correspondent for Reuters, and the editor of an underground antifascist newspaper. But even his cover job offers no security: In these dangerous times, any journalist is fair game.

Comment: Furst's latest story is inspired by a real-life group of Italian exiles, the giellisti (adherents to the anti-Fascist Giustizia e Liberta party) who fled Italy following the arrest of many of their group on the orders of Mussolini, and for a time, published an underground newspaper in Paris which was then smuggled back into Italy.

On the whole, the reviews of The Foreign Correspondent are positive. Booklist and Publishers Weekly both admire it sufficiently to award it starred review status. However, The Globe and Mail are a little more critical (or at least a little more cynical), opining that it is amazing that, in addition to holding down two demanding jobs and ghost-writing an autobiography of a famous Spaniard, our lead protagonist still has "the wherewithal to read Malraux, witness the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the forging of the so-called Pact of Steel, as well as to make love to an attractive English spy ... an insouciant Parisian gallery owner; and a German woman, the love of his life .... who is also involved with a group determined to depose Hitler." The exhausted reviewer sums up with the tongue in cheek comment: "It certainly puts those of us who can't keep up with American Idol from one week to the next on notice that we're not living up to our full potential."

Perhaps Kirkus Reviews sums things up best with its oh so true closing remark, "Who knows why this stuff is so deeply satisfying? But it most surely is."

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2006, and has been updated for the May 2007 edition. Click here to go to this issue.