Kingdom of Shadows

By Alan Furst,

Book cover of Kingdom of Shadows

Book description

A novel of adventure and intrigue in wartime Europe

Paris, 1938. Nicholas Morath, former Hungarian cavalry officer, returns home to his young mistress in the 7th arrondissement. He's been in Vienna where, amid the mobs screaming for Hitler, he's done a quiet favour for his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi. Polanyi…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Kingdom of Shadows as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I’m cheating here a bit as the novel’s set in Paris before the Second World War and covers a variety of locations, including the Sudetenland and Budapest. But it is foreshadowed by war. Furst writes travel pieces as well as fiction and it shows in the way he brings the brasseries, the Seine, and the apartments, along with the abattoirs, railway sidings, and threatening outlying backstreets to life in his books, many of which return to Paris again and again.

From Eliza's list on to immerse you in a wartime setting.

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