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U Section of the San Bernardino SUN April 29, 2007 
Kingdom of Shadows By Alan Furst Random House, 2001 
History Lessons
If only students were assigned to read Alan Furst novels instead of texts that have been revised and minimized for political correctness, they might actually understand how events of bygone days have shaped life today. And they may actually find excitement in learning. Alan Furst’s novels are about World War II and the events leading up to it. Perhaps because of the immunity geography provides, Americans have never understood completely the complexities of European history that led to both world wars. Furst’s sixth novel, “Kingdom of Shadows” is set in the Europe of 1938 and 1939, the last years of peace, years of intense and convoluted political intrigues and of plots and subplots to avert war. The protagonist is Nicholas Morath, a Hungarian nobleman living in Paris on a diplomatic passport and his uncle’s largesse, the Count Polanyi. The Count is a high-ranking diplomat in the Hungarian legation in Paris as well as a spy? A member of a nascent resistance movement to halt Hitler’s progress? He uses his nephew as a go between because Morath could travel easily between politically volatile areas on behalf of the advertising agency of which he is part owner. Still, at times, the risks are enormous. It was Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans that were the cause of all prewar angst. That’s how it had always been. The Great War had partitioned Europe artificially. Tiny nationalities (today we would call them ethnic groups) with names that sound suspiciously fictitious like Ruthenia and Moravia, conquered and tossed about by the great powers, were still the bone of contention. Today we are too quick to judge the American colonists morally. But if only there was widespread knowledge of the fact that just sixty years ago conquest of the week by the strong was simply the way of the world, there might be an easier acceptance of the past of the Americas. Seething with anger after World War I, Germany wanted Czech Sudetenland. And Polish Danzig. And more. Hungary wanted back Transylvania and Ruthenia and part of Slovakia. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and Greece all claimed Macedonia and Austria wanted back Croatia. But Croatia didn’t want to be ruled either by Austria or by Serbia (in the guise of Yugoslavia). It wanted self-determination, sovereignty - a relatively new concept back then but taken for granted today. Hitler screamed, whipping up the passions of the Sudeten Germans. And Europe? Europe was meek, it gave into Hitler. “You were given the choice between war and dishonor,” Churchill said to Chamberlain when he more or less handed Czechoslovakia over to Hitler at the Munich talks. “You chose dishonor, and you will have war.” Not that there was no opposition to Hitler. At his uncle’s bidding, Nicholas Morath goes from Czechoslovakia to Ruthenia, to Romania, to England weaving plots, putting together erstwhile enemies, forging the most unlikely alliances. But plots are foiled, hopes are dashed. Today we can only look back and wonder what might have been if this or that had succeeded. After many failed attempts, Morath, again at his uncle’s behest, goes around collecting clandestinely huge sums of money for the Hungarian opposition, the so-called Shadow Front. While in Romania to receive money from a Transylvanian noble, he is arrested by the Romanian secret police. They steal the money and throw him in jail, seemingly forever without a trace. A commando rescue and Morath is back in Paris. There he discovers that the man he got out of Ruthenia clandestinely, again because his uncle had asked him, had been an assassin. There are no clear-cut moral choices, Europe slumbers in a fog of moral ambiguities. It may be that Count Polanyi is involved in a conspiracy to create a united front against Hitler from dissatisfied Wehrmacht officers and German diplomats, Poles, Serbs, Czechs, Romanians. He kills the Hungarian legation secret service man who might have been working with the Gestapo. Then he disappears. Presumed dead. No espionage novel would be complete without a love story. When we meet Morath, he is having an affair with an Argentine estancia princess. But then her father, fearing war, comes and takes her back home. Still, in the midst of dangerous clandestine activities and the bittersweet memory of his previous affair, Morath finds true love. France is not in war, yet. Paris is free. The cafes and bistros hum with life. There is hope. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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