| The Polish Officer |  | Author: Alan Furst
Creator: George Guidall
Publisher: Recorded Books, LLC
Category: Book
Buy Used: $38.99
as of 8/1/2010 02:43 MDT details
Rating:  reviews
Sales Rank: 1323466
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Unabridged
Running Time: 705 Minutes
ISBN: 1402578679
EAN: 9781402578670
Publication Date: 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Unabridged-Library Edition
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| Customer Reviews:
Tough to Put Down July 12, 2010
Wayne Lucas (United States)
Riding along the coat tails of a man without a country and a full sense of national identity, The Polish Officer provides an absorbing tour across a Gestapo infested, Nazi-occupied Europe. Beginning with the blitzkrieg into Poland and ending with the first winter on a newly opened Eastern Front, the tale is cast in the shadow of Nazi Germany at its woeful peak. With each episode tending to be more gloomy than the last, you can't help but appreciate the authenticity of it all. Occasional reprieves and periodic victories from a slowly emergent resistance provide some relief, making the story so compelling that putting it aside is almost as difficult as the struggles recounted within.
 One of his best February 10, 2010
Alton Crowell (Irvine, CA United States)
Although the plot is episodic and the Polish Officer sometimes a bit too much like James Bond, this is a terrific read and reflects a marvelous sense of history as it tracks many Poles and French people during the early days of World War II as they kept looking to the West for planes from England, even America, that never came.
Like Tolstoy, he provides many memorable observations that reflect these turbulent times. My favorite,
"In the Rue Blance, a refugee family had become separated from the stream moving south across Paris. A man pulled a cart with quilts tied over a mound of furniture; here and there a chair leg poked through. His wife led two goats on a rope. The farm dog, panting hard in the afternoon heat, walked in the shadow of the cart . . . [in the sidewalk cafe] the old woman's lapdog barked fiercely at the goats. The farm dog looked up, then ignored it-'some little wooly thing that thought it was a dog; the things you see when you travel.' "
Good for its genre, with limitations October 15, 2009
Stephen Sossaman (San Francisco CA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
We probably read Furst for his evocation of pre-war and early war Europe, the smoky train stations and cafes where spies and refugees and black marketers play out their tragedies. Furst is wonderful at this. There are probably disenchanted philosophers and painters in those cafes, too, but Furst is interested not in large themes but in episodic adventures. As a page-turner, the novel is fine, but the work as a whole is structurally flawed. The separate adventures (slipping Poland's gold bullion out of Warsaw one step ahead of the Germans, engineering a prison break to free an important partisan leader, illuminating a harbor to guide British bombers on a night raid...) do not lead to anything, and the central character does not go through a character arc. Of course, if you single-handedly thwart the German invasion of England, a character arc seems trivial. There are lost opportunities for thematic revelation and character deepening, but this is quibbling, since Furst is writing a genre novel, not mainstream fiction. He is very good at memorable minor characters, acknowledges cultural and national differences that avoid simplistic good-guy-bad-guy distinctions, and provides a rich texture of military, historical, and social details.
Wartime suspense and romance. August 10, 2009
A. B. Perchorowicz (Illinois, USA)
A most interesting novel about a time when the world was very different. There is a good amount of history as a basis for the work and the story line is skillfully intertwined with actual historical events. At the same time that the book is informational it also points to the hardships of the Polish people during these difficult times. The writing is excellent and draws the reader to read on and on until the final page.
A Defeated Nation; An Undeafeated Heart July 19, 2009
Cody Carlson (Salt Lake City, UT United States)
Alan Furst's "The Polish Officer" is a beautiful story of war and resistance, spies and saboteurs, love and indifference. As Warsaw is falling to the Nazis Polish officer Alexander de Milja is tasked with taking Polish treasures out of the country. So begins his work in the shadow world of the Second World War. He soon finds himself in Occupied Paris working for Poland's government-in-exile and their British allies. de Milja soon finds himself working on the most important question the allies can come up with: Will Hitler attack the Soviet Union? Furst again displays his command of language and character here, and creates a truly moving story about the realities of wartime espionage. Furst dazzles with his ability to transport the reader back in time to the gritty, unhappy days of the Second World War.
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