014. The World At Night (1996).

The World At Night by Alan Furst (1996).

        

A very skillful reconstruction of PARIS on the brink of WWII

And

A very French love story.

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layers. – Jean Casson.  A playboy film producer.  Never makes artsy films, just popular French entertaining films such as “No Way Out”, “Last Train to Athens”, “The Devil’s Bridge” and “Night Run”.

Never admits it in front of his friends, but he is quite a patriot. That and one bad friend turns him into an accidental double agent.

Citrine.  Casson’s ex-girl friend and current love of his life. An actress and a dancer.

Louis Fischfang. The best script writer in Paris. Because he is a Jew, he has to escape from Gestapo at the end.

Erno Simic. Hungarian. He runs a small distribution company called Agna film. He is the one who tricks Casson to steal money for him from British spy agency and that forces Casson to become a double agent.

Marie-Claire. Ex-wife.

Bruno. Marie-Claire’s boy friend who flourish under Nazi occupation. In other word, excellent business man.

Langlade. Casson’s lawyer and an old friend. Do lots of pro bono works for him. He runs a light bulb manufacturing factory for day-job.

Since the author re-creates entire city with incredible details, there are lots of unique characters who are just so real and lovely. 

I think Alan Furst DOES really love this city he creates.

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lace. – Now, this is important. Why? Because we are talking about PARIS, here. PARIS!!

Not just regular Paris, but the one in 1940 and 1941 during the WWII.

Alan Furst used up a lot of pages to explain what Paris has been looked like on the brink of WWII. He is NOT talking about the politics here, but the lives of the regular people who lived in Paris.

Food, Clothes, Business, and since Casson is a film guy, a lot about film industry.

There is brief mention of the war zone in the beginning, too.

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lot. – This is the outline of the plot.

1.      Nazi start the war and Casson goes to war as a war-film-maker.

2.      One of his colleagues who claims himself a spy for Alley offers him a very simple spy-job (money transfer).

3.      Casson crosses the border and successfully delivers the money, but the job is a just scheme to steal the money and British agency is after him.

4.      Casson somehow convinces them he is innocent and goes back to the film business.

5.      Nazi agent is after him now for his connection with British spies which doesn’t exist at all. But Nazi refuse to believe it and Casson, in order to survive, becomes a Nazi spy. However, to the hell with Nazi, he actually becomes a double agent. 

6.      Inevitably, everything goes wrong and Casson is running for his life.

Because this is the WWII in Paris, and British agency and Gestapo are all in, I thought this could be a serious spy thriller. I couldn’t be more wrong. 

This is basically A LOVE STORY

disguises as a thriller or war story.

However, you will thoroughly experience what a daily life in Paris was like under Nazi occupation. There are numerous restrictions imposed in everyday lives, but still Paris is Paris.

You see, even Hitler was NOT crazy enough to demolish the culture of Paris. He did understand the importance of France’s history and its influence in Europe.

So, instead of burn it down to ashes like he did to other countries, he conquered Paris and made sure things were running smoothly. However being Hitler and all that, he just couldn’t stay there and enjoy Paris as it was. So instead, he tried really hard to installed doubt and fear in the mind of Parisians so that they could be suspicious with each other and eventually just be collapsed from within.

I don’t know who the hell he thought he was but he and his friends of course failed and lives in Paris went on as it had been for hundreds of years and at the end, he had no choice but killed himself. What a life.

This book is basically a literature about the Paris and people in it during the war year. There are nine chapters in this book and first seven of them are completely dedicated to that subject – Parisians during WWII.

The last two chapters named aptly “the Secret Agent” and “The Escape”, finally satisfied the claim this book pronounces on the cover -THRILLER.

In those two chapters, Casson has to go through all the regular routines in which all the exposed secret agents have to endure:

Exposure – Arrest – Torture – Escape – Then Escape forever to foreign Country.

Like a lot of good novel, this one has several sub-plots overlapping each other. But every small story line is spreading around the two main story lines.

One is about the War in France.

The other is making a film called “Hotel Dorado”.

And then there is one truly big storyline sitting on top of everything.

The Love story between Casson and Citrine.

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erdict. –The author recreates France during the war so real (the feel and smell of the city is captured so convincingly), you can fell the fear and despair from every paragraph.

After finishing the book, you would get plenty of knowledge of how the war had been fought behind the line by civilians.

Really, the thriller part in this book is just an excuse for the author to show off his very impressive RESEARCH on the subject which is European history during WWII. 

Because his research includes pretty much everything obviously, you can vividly picture the city and people in it with amazing clarity.

On the other hand, other than the last two chapters which forces Casson into a double agent, this is NOT an exciting SPY vs. SPY kind of book. 

The love between Cason and Citrine is sweat, sad and very romantic for French kind of way : No immediate happy ending, promises and loose end which evokes reader’s imagination.

Just perfect for this kind of book.

This is NOT for the thrill - seekers but if you like good literature with real characters and you are interested in Paris, specially during the WWII, then this book is for you.