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Dark Voyage

by Alan Furst

Summary

In another hair-raising black-and-white noir from Alan Furst, World War II is the backdrop, and preventing the enemy from sinking any more merchant ships is the point: in two years, the Allies have lost nearly 1600 vessels. A Dutch ship docked in Tangier, recruited by British intelligence and disguised as a neutral Spanish freighter carrying sardines and cooking oil, is sent to Portugal to pick up some sophisticated espionage technology. Then, under the command of its Dutch captain, Eric DeHaan, the ship-with a passenger list that includes a Russian beauty and a Greek stowaway-will carry a group of commandos on a harrowing voyage to Tunisia, where they hope to destroy the Nazi stronghold-if they aren't destroyed first by a mine or a submarine....

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Media Reviews

"Furst succeeds not just because of his artfully constructed prose, but because he's not averse to painting the war as a struggle of good against evil, yet does so without turning his characters into cartoons....Realistic but still grand: a gripping odyssey of ordinary men in extraordinary times."

   -- Kirkus

"It's no secret by now that Furst is a superlative chronicler of World War II, and his new novel is a splendid addition to an accomplished body of work...His mastery of the atmosphere of that era...is the fruit of tireless research and an empathetic imagination....The book casts such a spell with its exact evocations of time, place and language that one could swear Furst was a Brit writing out of his own experience in 1941 rather than an American writing today."

   -- Publishers Weekly

"[A] richly atmospheric new novel....The streamlined clarity with which DARK VOYAGE pulls all this together is extraordinary. Mr. Furst assesses each juncture in this suspenseful story with a pragmatic, calculating eye....Eventually these people's shared journey takes on a stature larger than any of the book's individual characters, DeHaan included. To be sure, he is a strong figure who embodies Mr. Furst's famously succinct eroticism...and engages in a relatively perfunctory affair with one passenger. And his dreams of more peaceful times, featuring women and France, are undeniably interesting. So is his 40-book library, where books by Malraux, Stendhal, Conrad and T. E. Lawrence make the perfect accompaniments to this one."    -- Janet Maslin

   -- New York Times

"Competitors despair. Alan Furst's mastery of the espionage novel puts him beyond any would-be rival....No one does it better than Furst and DARK VOYAGE is about as good as it gets. First class in every department."    -- Philip Oakes

   -- Literary Review

"DARK VOYAGE is the eighth of [Alan Furst's] wonderful spy novels, and there are passages that could be passed off as the work of both a meticulous narrative craftsman at the top of his game and a symbolist poet....Furst lulls us into the atmosphere, allows us to imbibe his descriptions and then, in the last 50 pages, turns the screws. The denouement of DARK VOYAGE is both breathtaking and utterly relaxed, not so pell-mell that Furst can't stop to be amused at the ironies of shifting alliances. If he ever breaks a sweat, it doesn't show."    -- Charles Taylor

   -- New York Times Book Review

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Random House Inc
Published date: 2004
Edition: 1th edition
Size: 6.75 x 10 inches
Weight: 1.1 pounds
Pages: 256

Publisher's Notes

“In the first nineteen months of European war, from September 1939 to March of 1941, the island nation of Britain and her allies lost, to U-boat, air, and sea attack, to mines and maritime disaster, one thousand five hundred and ninety-six merchant vessels. It was the job of the Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy to stop it, and so, on the last day of April 1941 . . .”

May 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter steams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa, she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmö.

But she is not the Santa Rosa. She is the Noordendam, a Dutch freighter. Under the command of Captain Eric DeHaan, she sails for the Intelligence Division of the British Royal Navy, and she will load detection equipment for a clandestine operation on the Swedish coast–a secret mission, a dark voyage.
A desperate voyage. One more battle in the spy wars that rage through the back alleys of the ports, from elegant hotels to abandoned piers, in lonely desert outposts, and in the souks and cafés of North Africa. A battle for survival, as the merchant ships die at sea and Britain–the last opposition to Nazi German–slowly begins to starve.

A voyage of flight, a voyage of fugitives–for every soul aboard the Noordendam. The Polish engineer, the Greek stowaway, the Jewish medical officer, the British spy, the Spaniards who fought Franco, the Germans who fought Hitler, the Dutch crew itself. There is no place for them in occupied France; they cannot go home.

From Alan Furst–whom The New York Times calls America’s preeminent spy novelist–here is an epic tale of war and espionage, of spies and fugitives, of love in secret hotel rooms, of courage in the face of impossible odds. Dark Voyage is taut with suspense and pounding with battle scenes; it is authentic, powerful, and brilliant.

Other Editions

• Hardcover - Random House Inc (2004) - from $1.00
• Paperback Reprint - Random House Inc (2005) - from $2.61

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