I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language.
ALAN FURSTI expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language.
ALAN FURSTI have a very serious censorship office inside my head; it censors things that I could tell you that you would never forget, and I don’t want to be the person to stick that in your brain.
ALAN FURSTWhen I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I’m gonna do 320, that’s 160 days.
ALAN FURSTI invented the historical spy novel.
ALAN FURSTShowing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
ALAN FURSTthe fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said
ALAN FURSTI’m a genre writer.
ALAN FURSTI expect them to have read books – there are a lot of people like that! That’s my audience.
ALAN FURSTYou write a lot of books; you hope you get better.
ALAN FURSTYou can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
ALAN FURSTI write what I call ‘novels of consolation’ for people who are bright and sophisticated.
ALAN FURSTLive today, for tomorrow we die.
ALAN FURSTI don’t just want my books to be about the ’30s and ’40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as ’40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.
ALAN FURSTOn the Greek frontier, one wasn’t sure what came next. So, don’t trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow.
ALAN FURSTAnd, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s armies in Albania.
ALAN FURSTI’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
ALAN FURST