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Let me put it this way: I don't plan to retire. What would I do, become a brain surgeon? I mean, a brain surgeon can retire and write novels, but a novelist can't retire and do brain surgery - or at least he better not.

Let me put it this way: I don't plan to retire. What would I do, become a brain surgeon? I mean, a brain surgeon can retire and write novels, but a novelist can't retire and do brain surgery - or at least he better not.


Alan Furst  Alan Furst
Tags: Good  Hero  Evil  You  Kind  Back 

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Author introduction

Alan Furst (/fɜːrst/; born February 20, 1941) is an American author of historical spy novels. Furst has been called "an heir to the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene," whom he cites along with Joseph Roth and Arthur Koestler as important influences. Most of his novels since 1988 have been set just prior to or during the Second World War and he is noted for his successful evocations of Eastern European peoples and places during the period from 1933 to 1944.

Quotes from the same author


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When I went to prep school in New York City, I had to ride the subway and learned how to do homework on the train. I can work and read through anything.

    Alan Furst  Alan Furst   
 Tags: Work School City Ride New York New
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When I get asked about novelists I like, they tend to be white, male, and British, like Graham Greene. They write the kind of declarative sentences I like. I don't like to be deflected by acrobatics.

    Alan Furst  Alan Furst   
 Tags: White Kind Write Like British About
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I spend my life writing fiction, so reading fiction isn't much of an escape. That's not always true, but I don't read much contemporary fiction.

    Alan Furst  Alan Furst   
 Tags: Life Reading Writing My Life Escape
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Venice has always fascinated me. Every country in Europe then was run by kings and the Vatican except Venice, which was basically run by councils. I've always wondered why.

    Alan Furst  Alan Furst   
 Tags: Me Run Country Kings Why Venice
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The way I work: I pick a country. I learn the political history - I mean I really learn it; I read until it sinks in. Once I read the political history, I can project and find the clandestine history. And then I people it with the characters.

    Alan Furst  Alan Furst   
 Tags: Work History People Political Learn
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Robert Ludlum, all of them, write the absolute best they can. You can't tone it down. You just do what you do, and if it comes out literary, so be it.

    Alan Furst  Alan Furst   
 Tags: Best Down You Tone Write Just
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Struggling writers are often advised to pick a simple genre, but it doesn't work that way.

    Alan Furst  Alan Furst   
 Tags: Work Simple Way Pick Struggling
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For John le Carre, it was always who's betraying who: the hall-of-mirrors kind of thing. When you go back to the '30s, it's a case of good vs. evil, and no kidding. When I have a hero who believes France and Britain are on the right side, a reader is not going to question that.

    Alan Furst  Alan Furst   
 Tags: Good Hero Evil You Kind Back
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