472) Īs it happens, they are both right: Khristo is going home, but that home is not along the Danube. 'Just a man going home.' ( Night Soldiers, p. 'You run from the Germans and fool the Russians. 'You're a funny sort of an American, river boy, that speaks Bulgarian and Russian and God knows what else.' A process which catches him by surprise, when pointed out to him by a Hungarian river-boat captain: Moreover, it is the contrast between these characters which demonstrates Khristo's own development-although the book ends with his arrival in New York, that is only another step in the process of Khristo's Americanization.

Many of these characters serve as doublets (or potential doublets) to Khristo, especially Drazen Kulic, Sascha Vonets and Robert Eidenbaugh, and it is this function which helps to explain the (sometimes abrupt) switch to their point of view. The narrative does on occasion focus on other characters, usually for obvious plot-related reasons, but also to illuminate Khristo's own story. It's his story: his brother's death, his training in Moscow, his time in Spain and then Paris, and his conduct once war is declared. Stoianev's position as the protagonist is fairly clear: the book begins and ends with him and the vast majority of it is told from his point of view. The protagonist in this case is Khristo Stoianev, and the thing he becomes in the course of the novel is an American. I think that he's being too modest: Night Soldiers is a novel in the classic sense. On the Unity of Night Soldiers (or, How to Become an American)Īlan Furst, in an interview in 2002, suggested that the first of his espionage novels, Night Soldiers, might best be described as a set of novellas.

Night soldiers by alan furst