Night Soldiers

Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates the European world of 1934-45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944. Night Soldiers is a scrupulously researched panoramic novel, a work on a grand scale.

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"'Ideally complex, intelligent, hugely intriguing...Furst is in a class of his own' William Boyd"

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The soldiers of the night were a secret brotherhood: Khristo, a Bulgarian peasant; Voluta, a Pole; Kulic, a Yugoslav; the clever Sascha Vonets; and Goldman, a Rumanian Jew. The novel describes the complex and violent way of life of a spy and is set in Russia, 1934-45.

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In Bulgaria in 1934, nineteen-year-old Khristo Stoianev sees his brother kicked to death by a gang of strutting thugs. Realizing a growing menace of fascism, he takes a risk on the promise of communism & flees to Moscow, where he is trained as an agent of the NKVD, precursor of the KGB. His first mission is to Catalonia, where he is soon caught up in the bloody horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Then he learns that he is to become the victim of one of Stalin's purges & is forced to flee once again, this time to Paris. He is a hunted man & before his silent war is over, every rule will be broken... & all loyalties discarded