Alan Furst

Novelist

1941-02-20

Alan Furst is an American novelist known for historical espionage fiction set in pre- and postwar Europe. His books are noted for atmosphere, political context, and intelligence tradecraft. He has been a prominent writer in modern spy literature.

Quotes by Alan Furst

Le Carre's voice - patrician, cold, brilliant and amused - was perfect for the wilderness-of-mirrors undertow of the Cold War, and George Smiley is the all-time harassed bureaucrat of spy fiction.
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I was raised on John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. Something about this genre - hard-boiled-private-eye-with-heart-of-gold - never failed to take me away from whatever difficulties haunted my daily world to a wonderful land where I was no more than an enthralled spectator.
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I love the combination of the words 'spies' and 'Balkans.' It's like meat and potatoes.
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I look for the dark story, where something secret was done. I read and read and pick up the trail of a true story. I use nothing but true stories. They are so much better than phony ones.
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If you read the history of the national Socialist party, they're all people who felt like life should have been better to them. They're disappointed, vengeful, angry.
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Venice has always fascinated me. Every country in Europe then was run by kings and the Vatican except Venice, which was basically run by councils. I've always wondered why.
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When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality.
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I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
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Poland is a wildly dramatic and tragic story. It's just unbelievable what went on with those people. How they survive, I don't really know. The Germans had a particular hatred for the Poles; they really considered them subhuman Slavs, and they were very brutal to them.
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Spy novels are traditionally about lone wolves, but how many people actually live like that?
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