Blood of Victory: A Novel - Softcover

Furst, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812968727 ISBN 13: 9780812968729

Publisher: Random House, 2003

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER · “[Furst] glides gracefully into an urbane pre–World War II Europe and describes that milieu with superb precision.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

In the autumn of 1940, Russian émigré journalist I. A. Serebin is recruited in Istanbul by an agent of the British secret services for a clandestine operation to stop German importation of Romanian oil—a last desperate attempt to block Hitler’s conquest of Europe. Serebin’s race against time begins in Bucharest and leads him to Paris, the Black Sea, Beirut, and, finally, Belgrade; his task is to attack the oil barges that fuel German tanks and airplanes. Blood of Victory is a novel with the heart-pounding suspense, extraordinary historical accuracy, and narrative immediacy we have come to expect from Alan Furst.

Praise for Blood of Victory

“Densely atmospheric and genuinely romantic, the novel is most reminiscent of the Hollywood films of the forties, when moral choices were rendered not in black-and-white but in smoky shades of gray.”—The New Yorker

“Furst’s achievement is a moral one, producing a powerful testament to fiction’s ability to re-create the experience of others, and why it is so deeply important to do so.” —Neil Gordon, The New York Times Book Review

“Richly atmospheric and satisfying.” —Deirdre Donahue, USA Today

About this title

Review:

I.A. Serebin, an émigré writer who heads the International Russian Union and edits its literary magazine, is no stranger to war: "Two gangsters, one neighborhood, they fight," he comments at a dinner party on a yacht in the Istanbul harbor in the autumn of 1940. Istanbul, to which Serebin has come to say good-bye to a dying friend, is a haven for spies, arms dealers, diplomats, and intrigue. Like most of the author's protagonists, Serebin is a romantic, a reluctant hero who tries to believe that war will not really change anything: "Hold fast to life as it should be, the daily ritual, work, love, and then it will be" is his credo. After Paris falls to the Germans, he realizes that is impossible. When a French diplomat's wife, whom he met and bedded on the freighter that brought him to Turkey, puts him in touch with a Hungarian spy working with the British Secret Service, Serebin allows himself to be recruited for a mission to disrupt the flow of oil from Romania's Ploesti fields to German factories--something that has been tried by the British before, without success. Alan Furst, a master stylist whose novels are peopled with characters who remain in the reader's mind long after the last page is turned, evokes Istanbul's smoky, spicy, shadowy atmosphere with the same authenticity he brings to the settings of all his thrillers, most notably Paris. No one is better at describing both place and players in the period just before and during World War II; widely hailed as the successor to Eric Ambler and Graham Greene, Furst proves in his gripping, compulsively readable seventh novel what a contender he is for that title. --Jane Adams

From the Back Cover:

“[Furst] glides gracefully into an urbane pre–World War II Europe and describes that milieu with superb precision.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Densely atmospheric and genuinely romantic, the novel is most reminiscent of the Hollywood films of the forties, when moral choices were rendered not in black-and-white but in smoky shades of gray.” —The New Yorker

“Furst’s achievement is a moral one, producing a powerful testament to fiction’s ability to re-create the experience of others, and why it is so deeply important to do so.” —Neil Gordon, The New York Times Book Review

“Richly atmospheric and satisfying.” —Deirdre Donahue, USA Today

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0812968727
• ISBN 13: 9780812968729
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 246