![]() It is 1934 and after his simple-minded brother, Nikko, is beaten to death by the village fascists, Bulgarian peasant Khristo Stoianev is recruited by a peripatetic Bolshevik talent-spotter, Antipin. ![]() ![]() Night Soldiers is long, at 511 pages in the HarperCollins paperback. This was the first of a series of 12 historical espionage novels all set in Eastern and Central Europe during the dark days of the 1930s and on into the Second World War, which have cemented his reputation as one of the most intelligent and distinctive spy writers of our time. Inspired by the scenery and history of Eastern Europe, he conceived the complex spy thriller, Night Soldiers, published four years later in 1988. Then in 1984 he was commissioned by Esquire magazine to write about a journey down the Danube. A spot of biographyįurst, born in New York in 1941, wrote four novels in the late 1970s and early 1980s which weren’t particularly successful. The terms ‘spy novel’ or ‘thriller’ don’t get close to conveying the panoramic reach, the range of characters and places, and the magical depth of research which make it less a novel and more a portrait of an entire continent in crisis. This is an awesomely atmospheric, wide-ranging and astonishingly knowledgeable novel. ![]()
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