Dark Star by: Alan Furst

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Dark Star by: Alan Furst

The book Dark Star by Alan Furst is a murky and dense novel with a seemingly acquired bit of taste. In this book, Andre Szara, a seasoned soviet journalist reluctantly evolves from a party participant and establishes himself as an established spy master and a romantic rogue eventually. The protagonist in the novel, Szara is an affable sort of European observer who engages events that he knows very well are beyond his control. In this book, I consider Furst’s gloves to b off. The year is 1937, two years before the onset of the world war. Furst portrays his main character as an intelligent fool who ironically survives at the center of catastrophe in Europe.

Szara, in his endeavors stumbles across his destiny amid the NKVD (the secret police of the Stalin) machinations. He is fully aware that his every move is under surveillance. He is at the brink of death with every move he makes and as it turns out quite directly, throughout his lucky but absurd run to Prague from a Belgian port across Geneva, Paris, Berlin, Vilnius, and Moscow. The self preservation of Szara is more of a clever Russian instinct who is fully aware of his country’s paradoxes, and scrambles at the smallest notion of worry or doubt. He goes on to establish himself as an inside observer of history’s worst group of slaughters.

Szara manages to survive through self teaching on discretion. Since the time is the late 1930s in Europe, his only maneuvers and options only resolve to closing down. In this time, Hitler is currently in Berlin and the English prime minister has dismissed the central European countries to far places where England has little knowledge. Stalin in Russia has opted to resort to purge actions as an option of consolidating Hitler’s powers. Meanwhile, a sinister general in the NKVD has settled for implementing Szara for exposing spies within the pre revolutionary communist party. Szara then endeavors to save his life from the Germans, his own Russian allies, and from the Nazis who go out on a sport hunting spree for Jews. The Stalin is tyranny minded and the Soviet Union is a rotten group, the truth is that Szara bears good motives

Szara is a Jew from Poland and Furst implements the use of Eastern Europe pogroms when trickling Szara’s history. This serves as an explanation on the survival instinct bestowed on Szara. This as well gives the reader a hint of Szara’s penchant for romance, having tragically lost his wife in the the Revolution echoes. Nevertheless, it is the Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany grinds, and the ever increasing plight among the Jew community in Europe, that the author depicts his ability of making bleak portraits of the European pre war era. In one tense scene, we find Szara’s first hand experience with Kristallnacht.  Meanwhile, he becomes smitten by his espionage Jewess in Berlin, who reports on war machines in Germany.

Later on, together with a mysterious aristocrat from France, Szara moonlights with a view of securing British certificates that would allow the safe passage of Jews to Palestine. The instinctual existence of Szara in Europe is so woven in many series of events, that Furst brings out the notion that Szara is a cult hero for the Jewish society. In my view, this is a master stroke that acts as a revelation of plain humanity of the Jewish locals, a wrong mentality and impression of where they belong in reality.

In this piece of art, the author combines his commentary with a blending role by Szara as a handler of NKVD at the precise time when the Stalin agency leaders are being purged. The author uses these distant events as tools for haunting Szara, thus the book’s protagonist in either a lone state, or with an unlikely comrade, who imminently puzzles through his inexplicable survival as well as disappearances. The author allows his audience to decipher the Szara’s Byzantine dance in the book. The outcome is a dual effect of dense puzzlement as well as a thrilling urgency combined with suspense and frustration. As the readers, i sometimes found myself in suspense needing to know who was pulling the strings, and whether Szara would ever find out.

Furst fills Dark Star with minor characters but with a trademark sense. The reader is allowed to elegantly conceive European heroes and villains in well constructed paragraphs, prior to their often quiet perseverance and tragic exits. Alan Furst enables his work to burst through lovable souls. Additionally, Furst goes on to reveal his renowned trademark of color and sensation in a pulsating setting vibrating with life. Detailing Paris especially brings out the best in him. Night time rains and smoky café, or, fried potato aromas and sweltering arrondissements. Amid the ruins of blitzkrieg, Berlin ends up becoming a surreal landscape and the countryside landscape in Poland

I consider this book as a gamut of the best writing by Alan Furst. It is quite notable that Furst undertook adequate research on the issues and controversies surrounding much of Europe and the events that took place prior to the World War. Rather than happily, it is a book that insistently pulls the reader. Furst manages to deliver an acquired and rich taste that simultaneously delivers a bittersweet heartache and refreshment. The overall plot of the book was magnificent through well-constructed descriptions of events as well as scenes. I would highly recommend this book to an individual seeking drama and brief knowledge on Europe before the World War.

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