Alan Furst

The New York Times calls Alan Furst “America’s preeminent spy novelist.”

He is the author of Night Soldiers (1988), Dark Star (1991), The Polish Officer (1995), The World at Night (1996), Red Gold (1999), Kingdom of Shadows (2000), Blood of Victory (2002), Dark Voyage (2004), and The Foreign Correspondent (2006).

Earlier this week I asked him what he was reading. His reply.

I've been reading the magnificent Vasily Grossman -- the big, Tolstoyesque novel -- Life and Fate," and the newer book, a collection of his wartime journalism, which has -- and I won't ruin it for you -- the best line about WWII that I've ever seen, from a Russian Sergeant, in Berlin, at the end of the war.

A book I read last summer, Alberto Moravia's The Woman of Rome, is another great anti-fascist novel -- rare in being written from a woman's point-of-view by a man.

I like also the fine Peter Hopkirk's On Secret Service East of Constantinople.

A small devil just came to my desk and whispered that this is so heavy, this stuff, that I should add Britney Spears' autobiography, but, you know, devils. And No, I didn't.

Is there one?

Visit Alan Furst's website and read an excerpt from The Foreign Correspondent.

--Marshal Zeringue