This was the first Alan Furst spy thriller that I ever read, and returning to re-read it after a number of years (and reading all the novels he's written since) I'd still rate it as one of his best. It follows the experiences of Polish Captain Alexander de Milja, a map analyst on the Polish general staff who is recruited into the intelligence service of the Polish government (and army) in exile after the conquest of Poland in 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union. As always, Furst's research is top notch, and he subtly works to counteract some of the things which "everyone knows" in retrospect about the war and the nations involved. For instance, all the Polish characters stake their hopes, after the occupation of their own country, on France really getting into the war: France had fought Germany to a stand still twenty years before and eventually beaten them. Surely they can do it again. It's only once he's working with Polish intelligence in Paris, talking to French officers, that de Milja realizes that the spirit of 14-18 is not there. The French leaders are seeing themselves as a beaten force even before the army is hopelessly disrupted by the German advance.More than some of his other novels, this one makes a point of sketching out the overall shape of the war as it develops, but it does so with a deft hand and never becomes pedantic. The reader feels that he is coming along with the characters in what he learns. Furst never crams history in edgeways and it never interrupts the story. Having read a number of his novels now, one of the things which is characteristic of Furst's novels is that his character's are low on close personal connections. de Milja is married, but his wife has been in a mental sanitorium for some years when the story opens, distant from the world. He is not able to take her with him she he flees the country. During the course of the novel, he has several sexual relationships of varying closeness, but one of the things that he recognizes as happening to himself is that as he has given himself more fully to the clandestine way of fighting that he is engaged in, he necessarily commits himself to not forming human attachments. In trying to destroy those who have destroyed his country, he is engaged in destroying his own life further. So it does flow naturally from the kind of events being described (espionage is not the kind of work that those with close and stable families are drawn to) and yet in that Furst's novels seem to rise above the espionage genre and succeed as very good stand-alone novels about the period, I find myself wishing we could see a bit more of the sort of life that is being fought for.
Espionage at its deepest, darkest best. Though crafted from tissues of cunning and deceit—as such novels are—The Polish Officer is less the kind of chess game played with human pawns often depicted in this genre, than an exploration of the price and meaning of survival … less a novel concerning spy craft than a perspective announced by the title itself. As a Pole, the main character, De Milja, plants his feet on a land bloodied by the battles between East and West since the time of Genghis Khan—a land that looks, like Janus, in both directions. As a Pole, he has both East and West in him (with their languages). As a Pole living World War II, in an excruciating way, he is a man inhabiting a kind of no man’s land. And his statelessness is compounded by his Jewishness. Emptied of place, an outsider everywhere, De Milja has all it takes to be a spy. Never mind the plot, which—to the degree that it exists—is picaresque. That is, after becoming a spy more or less by accident, the hero progresses from adventure to episode, crisis to escape, surviving this barrage of war and espionage both by dint of wit and the courage of those who have only life left to risk. Here I quote De Milja: “The fight against despair, he told himself, was just another way of fighting Germany.”War mixes things up, making for strange bedfellows. Espionage crams a second blender into that stew, so that in this novel, most of the hero’s “bedfellows” are indeed strange, including those he takes to bed. Genya Bielis, of uncertain name, is one, who, despite her beauty has complicated bloodlines, an intricate past, and a future which requires her to leave him—should she survive. And there are others, including the woman of the novel’s end. The fact that she is a prostitute says much, if not all. This novel narrates the complex price that the courage of survival can mean in times of war. This is my third Furst … and favorite, so far.
What do You think about The Polish Officer (2001)?
The career of Polish intelligence officer during World War II; kind of a thriller, but fighting against it every step of the way. Furst is best known for his pontilist detail in setting, with each sentence sometimes seemingly like an entire research project into what sort of nails were used in this railcar construction, what substance was used to clear tank parts in German repair facilities (gasoline), etc. His characters are all Hemingway pastiche, but well done enough so as not to become unintentional parodies, as they do in many H-addicted writers, such as, say, Len Deighton. Furst has a maddening way of choosing the most emotionally obscuring scenes to do his character work, with revelations handed out like bread in a concentration camp. He also obscures information that all the characters know perfectly well for no apparent dramatic purpose. It begins to feel almost perverse after a while. But Furst does give you excellent action scenes for relief. The plot is meandering and builds to no climax by design, but you quickly understand that that's the idea, and either go along with it or stop reading. After you choose to become involved, it's a bit like exploring a dark and dangerous city after midnight. You never know when you're gonna get jumped, but you also never know when you're gonna stumble on some moment of weird revelation or grotesque beauty. Despite my cavils, I enjoyed the book and think it will stay with me.
—Tony Daniel
"The Polish Officer" is the third in Alan Furst's still growing, loosely connected, series of "Night Soldiers" novels about spies and secret agents during World War II. In it, we meet Alexander DeMilja, a military cartographer pressed into espionage duty by his superiors as the Nazis overrun Warsaw.DeMilja is reserved but intense, brave and lucky, and above all, smart and quick to learn. These qualities stand him in good stead as he smuggles Poland's gold reserves out of the country, works with the burgeoning resistance movement, finds himself in Paris posing first as a recently-dead Russian poet in exile and then a coal baron, and finally, fighting alongside partisans and leading a prisoner rescue from a notorious German prison inside of occupied Russia. Furst, as usual, leverages deep historial knowledge to make all of this not just compelling, but credible, and even understated. "The Polish Officer" sees it's author reaching new heights, paring and focusing his prose into a finely-tuned and deeply-felt story of war.
—Paul
In "The Polish Officer", Alan Furst has written a solid World War 2 thriller. The main character, the spy de Milja, was intriguing. I found him compelling yet i also saw him as mysterious and guarded just as one would expect a spy to be. I found the way that Furst had thrust the horrors of war upon very otherwise ordinary people -- people who otherwise would never have been involved in the sordid goings on of war -- to be very engaging. That, I suppose, is what World War 2 did to so many in the war. That extraordinary time brought out the best and worst in so many otherwise mundane aspects of lives of people. Furst's writing style is typically well researched and accessible. At times however, I did find it hard to follow all the different characters, who were often minor ones but they were recurring. Only the central character was consistently portrayed so there were too many to follow otherwise. This was my first introduction to Furst. As I enjoyed this one, and since I typically like this genre of book, I look forward to reading more from him.
—Kelley
