The World at Night: We'll Always Have Paris

Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Rediscoveries , Staff Picks , Fiction

If you’ve seen Casablanca more times than you can count, try Alan Furst’s stylish novel of Paris under the Occupation, The World at Night.  It’s the love story of a man and his city.

Jean Casson is a film producer whose beloved Paris has been invaded.  At first, this means putting up with small deprivations and indignities—working with a German production company, accepting a curtailed social life.  But as the noose tightens, Casson is approached by British intelligence agents and then by the suspicious Germans.  His job makes him a perfect tool for either espionage service.  While Paris tries to pretend that everything is normal, Casson feels his pleasant life slipping irretrievably away.

Furst does an extraordinary job of capturing the everyday life of a city under occupation, from the moral compromises made in order to maintain the façade of normality to the casual risking of life in a growing conspiracy of resistance.  Casson is a wonderful character, an appreciatively womanizing man who believes himself to be a cynic but who lives his life according to the most romantic of principles—his devotion to his art, his passion for a series of lovers, and a slowly dawning patriotism.  

Furst’s novels of World War II feature quiet, ordinary men caught up in extraordinary times.  The newest is The Foreign Correspondent.  Fans of literary espionage novels like the works of John Le Carre will find them deeply satisfying.  The World at Night is a subtler story than some of Furst’s more sweeping war novels (try Dark Star for the epic tale of the invasion of Poland), but it’s richly cinematographic, just perfect to imagine in Casablanca’s beautifully lit shades of gray.  It would make a great film, too.  How does Hollywood miss books like this? 

And (play it again, Sam) there’s a sequel, Red Gold.