Alan Furst is, with Joseph Kanon, at the forefront of American wartime fiction. Like Kanon, Furst is wholly European in outlook. His sympathies are with the occupied, those who, against all the odds, fight back.
Under Occupation is one of his slighter works, only 200 pages. Furst writes with such authority that I assumed he was writing about real people - until I tried to look them up on Wikipedia. His hero is Parisian author of crime and spy fiction Paul Ricard - a moderately-known figure on the fringes of society. A secret blueprint is thrust on him in the street and he feels obliged to try and deliver it to the resistance. Progressively, Ricard is drawn in, paired up with the Polish lesbian Kasia, and run by Turkish aristocrat Leila, Ricard ends up running a safe house near the Gare de Lyon.
I won't reveal what happens next. What I will say is this: every page reeks authenticity. I never for a second lost interest or lost belief. I was fascinated, enthralled and, at the end, thrilled. I have no grounds to say, this is Paris as it was under the Nazis. But I can say this is Paris as it should have been in 1942-3.
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