Blood of Victory
A Novel
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4.0 • 109 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Critics who thought Furst's previous novel Kingdom of Shadows lacked a clearly linear plot will find much to praise him for in his toothsome new historical espionage thriller. The novel (named for the Romanian oil vital to the German war machine) describes a daring operation to disrupt the flow of that oil from the Ploesti fields in Romania to Germany by sinking a group of barges at a shallow point in the Danube in early 1941. The motley group attempting this maneuver barely holds together: its members include a sultry French aristocrat, hounded Russian Jews, even Serbian thugs. And while the tale features the same period details as its predecessor, and stretches from Istanbul to Bucharest with detours in Paris and London, it reaffirms the signature Slavic focus of the author's earlier books like Dark Star. This is literally personified in the novel's protagonist, the dogged Russian migr I.A. Serebin, who has to dodge every kind of secret police from the Gestapo to Stalin's NKVD (" 'Why, Serge?' 'Why not?' That was, Serebin thought, glib and ingenuous, but until a better two-word history of the USSR came along, it would do"). Diehard Furst fans will appreciate the recurrence of several secondary characters from Kingdom of Shadows (especially a certain heavyset Hungarian spymaster). But even newcomers will be ensnared by Furst's delicious recreations of a world sliding headlong into oblivion (wonderfully illustrated by Serebin having to drive a car off a cliff to escape with his life at the climax). Maps. will be released at the same time asBlood of Victory. This, plus the attention Furst got forKingdom of Shadows, could easily propelBlood of Victory onto bestseller lists. 5-city author tour.
Customer Reviews
Spies on the Danube
Another great Alan Furst saga of WWII along the Danube. Great characters going wonderful places.