by Cygne Sauvage
One of the books taken from the tsundoku (Japanese term for compiled volumes reserved for reading later) to pass the time while locked at home is The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst. This is one of the three out of the total ten books by the author that have been resting in our library shelf, untouched, for almost three years already. The other titles are Night Soldiers and The Foreign Correspondent. I am wanting to experience a spy thriller not written by John Lecarre’, whose entire collection I have read, save for his recent installments.
Alan Furst’s espionage novel sits in the context of the early years of the Second World War in Europe. Considered the continent’s darkest period, the story leads us particularly to Warsaw in 1937, introducing his protagonist, the French military attaché Colonel Mercier who, on top of his basic political function, manages several agents operating in the field. One of them accidentally exposed his identity catalyzed by this spy’s break of security measures driven by his lust for his lover, who he later learned is actually complicit in trapping his reluctant cooperation with his country’s enemy. The French officer saved his life and extracted vital information in exchange for a escape route to a new life in another place.
No different from Lecarre’s spies whose motivations are always cultivated by emotional entanglement with an attractive someone from the opposite sex, such as the case of Charlie in The Little Drummer Girl. Similarly, affairs of the heart often misdirect the policies from the top echelon. Passionate encounters of the flesh as sublimation of deep anxiety on the uncertainty of the grim situation everyone is in: beset by betrayal and deception.
The rest of Furst’s narrative delves on Mercier’s execution of the secret document his spy transmitted, his struggle with his German nemesis and how he adroitly drew his own conclusions about the chances of an attack on France through the Belgian Ardennes. Only to be superseded by a higher order rendering useless what he had diligently pursued.
The book is not an ideal read in the time of isolation for it exudes the desolate atmosphere of armed conflicts, of the desperation of exposed spies, fleeting human relationships and the superficiality of life itself.
But the author’s superb prose keeps me from putting it down, distracting my attention to the pervasive gloom in real time, not unlike Europe in those days of Nazi supremacy.
The Well-Read Company 