Foreign Correspondent Part 5: To Ruin The Book

To ruin the book I must start by saying that I have finally figured out the plot. Carlo must rescue his current girlfriend because she is a spy that was just captured by the Nazis, he also must save his newspaper liberazione. Also two warnings, I will ruin the end of the book in this post and I have not taken my adderal today so this may be confusing. Looking back on the book now i feel like the plot has kind of been in front of me the whole time, i think that that is the hardest part about the book. The character development is shown very much in this section because it is the climax and you can see how people do under pressure. For instance, Carlo is cool headed and makes rational decisions whereas Colonel Ferrera is more likely to make a big decision quickly and have to work his way out of it. This is shown when Carlo, when faced with an Italian spy agency trying to take his newspaper, does not just storm in and gun the men down, he gets evidence and takes it to a french spy agency who takes them out for him. This is also connected to the plot, which was mentioned above, because they are the people trying to stop the newspaper from functioning. To solve the other problem Carlo had to make a deal with the devil, he promised to go back to Italy if they found his girlfriend. I think that this also shows that Carlo is a very good friend and a very committed boyfriend. Back to the solution he promises this to a man associated with the M16 or the british spy service. Of course they find her but the book ends with him having to go to Italy. Also Colonel Ferrera runs off with a russian stripper because he does not want to promote his book. THE END

Blog Post Part 4

I was just woken up from an early bed time to write this so please ignore any spelling, grammatical, or logic errors. As I have become about halfway done the book has gotten pretty good. It has developed a plot, to get one of Carlo's girlfriends out of Germany, and to keep the anti-fascist newspaper alive even though the Italians are doing all they can to stop it. Carlo's is once again showing himself to be quite the lady's man. He has about four girlfriends each in a different city in Europe that he visits pretty often as a Foreign Correspondent for Reuters, a British News Service. Carlo also is ghost writing an autobiography about Ferrera the Italian officer who defected. The story is very interesting and shows why one might not like the fascists. There was also a sex scene. The plot developed quite a lot in this section of the reading, I am now able to identify that there is one. Also the characters developed with the reader becoming more aquatinted with colonel Ferrera and you are seeing a more personal side to the once non personal Carlo. This book has become much better ever since the third part started and I am very happy with it right now. This book is a little like James Bond because he acts slightly like a spy and is very good with the ladies. I would give this book a four out of five point seven six (4/5.76) because although it was slow to start it has really improved in this section.

The Foreign Correspondent: Part 3

So far I have read to page one thirty eight, but I am covering seventy one to one thirty eight. The book has developed somewhat of a plot but it is still not fully clear. I think that it will have something to do with using his resistance magazine Liberazione to weaken Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany’s alliance. In this section he found out through an unknown source that there were spies throughout Italy’s inner workings and he made it his job to make sure to tell everybody though his publication, Liberazione. Later in this section he does publish this and has it distributed throughout Italy. I think it is funny because in every issue it has a note to the police and officials who read it. I also think that the political cartoon that is posted is funny because it uses a proverb that goes like “Potere e meglio di fottere.” (p.130) This roughly translates to “Power is better than %&*!ing.” This quote was put with a very ugly looking Mussolini and a girl who is running away from him. Carlo also proves himself to be something of a player. So far he has had three separate girls, one in Berlin, one in Paris, and one in Prague. However this comes back to haunt him when he has to tell one that he is leaving and she calls him out on having another. This is not good. This also leads me to believe that having more than one girls must have been much easier without the invention of facebook or other social networking sites. I have begun to enjoy this book more now but still have yet to make up my mind on whether or not to recommend it.

The Foreign Correspondent: Part 2

This book is getting more and more confusing. Carlo is now traveling throughout Europe and is reporting for a British newspaper. He has befriended the Captain Ferrera but had to flee from Spain because the fascists were winning and would soon take the country over. Carlo asked Captain Ferrera where he was going to go but Captain Ferrera was very paranoid about that because he did not want any one to know so he mentioned that he was going to France. I think that this may be a jumping off point for a normal plot but I am unsure. It is now established that Carlo is the main character and the author is following him for the main part with a few paragraphs following an underground anti-fascist newspaper. The author develops Carlo's character through thoughts, author's comments and dialogue between himself and other characters. So far there has been no obvious theme that has developed other than maybe "be the change that you want to see in the world" because he is going against the fascist Italian government and Nazi Germany. To this point i would give the book around two to two and a half stars out of five because it is a really confusing book so far and there has yet to be a strong plot. Although the book the book is far from over this still bugs me. But even though I am bugged by this book, I am still intrigued to find out what happens to the book and how the plot develops.

The Foreign Correspondent: Part 1

In book The Foreign Correspondent, Alan Furst develops the main character in an original way. He begins by following a character who is first assumed to be the main character until he is gunned down by a group of fascist secret service assassins, the OVRA. Upon realizing that he is dead the reader is left to question who the main character is. The scene soon changes to a secretive meeting where you hear a mans name mentioned, Carlo Weisz, a reporter who has been chosen to take the place of the man who had just been murdered. This is when the reader finally is introduced to Carlo Weisz, he is in Spain reporting on the Spanish Civil War that is going on all around him. You soon learn that he is an Italian expatriate, which is strange because he is reporting on the story from the side of the Communists. The story which he is working on is about the famed “Garibaldi Battalion” a battalion of almost all Italians that are fighting fascism because they do not agree with it, this tells the reader a lot about Carlo Weisz who you then assume to be and expatriate not by choice but because he doesn’t agree with the fascists. While he is there he interviews a man that goes by Captain Ferrera. The scene ends after Carlo Weisz begins to interview him. The author uses a strange technique to introduce the main character that sets the scene and introduces the reader to other characters very well