So detailed are Alan Furst’s WWII spy novels — theater showtimes, food, fashions — it’s hard to believe he didn’t actually live in Europe then or, at least, have a researcher.
But no: “I can’t have a researcher,” says Furst, whose latest, “Midnight in Europe,” came out this summer. “I have to do it myself. My consciousness finds certain things and knows it’s a bull’seye.”
He says he relies on Wikipedia (for dates), long ago dispatches from foreign correspondents and books, many of them out of print. It also helps, he says, to have grown up on the “Eurocentric” Upper West Side of the 1940s and ’50s. “If I had a date, we’d go to a French bistro on 11th Avenue where the sailors used to go,” he says. “Red-checked tablecloths!”
Here’s what’s in his library.
Scent and Subversion by Barbara Herman
I was at a book fair in New Orleans signing books and next to my stack was this . . . I took one look and bought it immediately, because I have a girlfriend who’d go crazy for it. It’s a sexy history of fragrance — Crepe de Chine, Jungle Gardenia, Je Reviens. It’s beautifully written — a fascinating and intriguing history of scent.
The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
I’m a student of sea captains — I was raised on C.S. Forester’s Captain Hornblower books. This is a terrific fiction about a British corvette — a small ship, like the American torpedo boat — guarding Atlantic convoys to Russia. It has a magnificent captain and an all-too-human crew, and has a ring of truth to it. I suspect Monsarrat was on corvette duty himself.
Salt by Mark Kurlansky
A friend who is extremely hard to please recommended this strongly, and I just fell in love with it. It’s such an interesting way into history, particularly the history of Europe but also the whole world. For a long time, salt was the crucial factor in staying alive: Salt preserved food. A very simple part of our lives we take for granted has a history!
Colette’s France by Jane Gilmour
Colette’s a great favorite of mine — she was a sort of Balzac of romantic passion. This is a story of a writer with a fairly wild life — she had women lovers, she had male lovers, she had felons who were lovers. There’s a great photo of her [here] in the Palais Royale, pouring milk into a bowl for her cat.