I invented the historical spy novel.
ALAN FURSTI invented the historical spy novel.
ALAN FURSTI don’t inflict horrors on readers.
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 FURSTThe best Paris I know now is in my head.
ALAN FURSTPoliticians were like talking dogs in a circus.
ALAN FURSTI don’t really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
ALAN FURSTMy novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else’s books.
ALAN FURSTGood people don’t spend their time being good.
ALAN FURSTWhen I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I’m gonna do 320, that’s 160 days.
ALAN FURSTI read very little contemporary anything.
ALAN FURSTI’m a genre writer.
ALAN FURSTYou can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
ALAN FURSTthe fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said
ALAN FURSTOnce you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don’t tell them.
ALAN FURSTGood people want to spend their time mowing the lawn and playing with the dog. But bad people spend all their time being bad. It is all they think about.
ALAN FURSTI grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers.
ALAN FURST