Will I love The Spies of Warsaw?

Reading a novel by Alan Furst is like seeing Casablanca for the first time, if it were written by Hemingway. There’s that same evocative atmosphere of people smoking cigarettes, having affairs, making sophisticated remarks, while looming over them is the war. Furst mines a narrow niche. All of his books are set in Europe either during World War Two or in the Thirties, with the war threatening. The protagonist here is Colonel Mercier, military attaché at the French embassy in Warsaw. Mercier must navigate the salons and alleyways of Warsaw against all manner of spies and German agents. The book… show more.

I’ve always felt humanity could avoid wars and repeating itself through the study of historical cycles. And what struck me about this book is how it is the perfect depiction of the run-up to the 2nd world war. Furst creates an amazingly perspective on mid 20th century Europe in this regard. My grandfather was Polish and lost many of his relatives in the Holocaust; The Spies of Warsaw is a look into old Pre-Soviet Poland, its complex nationalism, and the run-up to Hitler’s ‘sudden’ invasion - the trigger to the 2nd WW. But, instead of broad historical troupes,… show more.