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Kingdom of Shadows (Night Soldiers, Bk 6) (Audio Cassette) (Unabridged)
Kingdom of Shadows - Night Soldiers, Bk 6 - Audio Cassette - Unabridged Author:Alan Furst, George Guidall (Narrator) Paris, 1938. As Europe edges toward war, Nicholas Morath arrives in Paris on the night express from Budapest. Morath, urbane and handsome at forty-four, a lieutenant of the Hungarian calvary in the First World War, spends his days as the owner of a small advertising agency and his nights in the bohemian circles of his Argentine mistres... more »s. Looming over this elegant existence, however, is the shadow of Adolf Hitler. Morath has been recruited by his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi, for a secret mission of the utmost importance. Polanyi is a diplomat at the Hungarian legation in Paris; desperate to stop his country's drift into an alliance with Nazi Germany, he lives in a shadow world and trades in conspiracy.
It is Morath who does Polanyi's clandestine work, moving between the beach cafés of Juan-les-Pins and the forests of Ruthenia, from Czech fortresses in the Sudetenland to the private gardens of déclassé royalty in Budapest. Hungary is a small nation caught between two great powers: to avoid being drawn into the coming conflagration will require desperate ingenuity. As the failure of appeasement becomes grimly apparent, Hitler marches into Prague and threatens Poland, and Morath is drawn deeper and deeper into danger, as quiet favors become secret missions until ultimately he is risking his life behind enemy lines for the very future of a free Europe.
In this, Furst's most accomplished novel to date, the quotidian details of Europe on the brink of the Second World War are brilliantly evokes, from the overflowing ashtrays of a Left Bank café to the plush upholstery on a Viennese train to the stamp of a Romanian passport. With Furst's deft use of suspense, each rendezvous, each foray behind enemy lines, and each checkpoint crossing is a breathtaking work of narrative realism.
Unabridged, read by George Guidall, 8 cassettes, 9.5 hours.« less