by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
Published by Henry Holt & Company, Metropolitan Books Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, War
Format: Hardcover
Published by Henry Holt & Company, Metropolitan Books Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, War
Format: Hardcover
Berlin November, 1939 Jewish shops have been looted and synagogues destroyed. Jews are being rounded up. Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman, decides to flee out the back door when he hears pounding on his front door. He cannot believe this is happening. He served his country in the Great War. He boards a train. It is the first train he boards but it will not be his last. He is a man on the run, boarding one train after another. Fleeing. He goes across Germany, observing, escaping, learning, escaping. Through it all, he observes indifference, he has been turned away from a business partner, betrayed, he has gone through a period of not believing to accepting what is going on. This is a powerful novel about life in Nazi Germany. About a man whose life is falling apart. A man who cannot believe this is happening. A man who tries to flee but is stuck riding the trains as the borders have been closed. Sounds like a nightmare, right? Imagine, everything in your life changing. Places you frequented, no longer let you in. Your business is no longer wanted. Your business partner ends your professional relationship but give you only a portion of what you are owed, friends – who has friends anymore, now when people do not want to be seen associating with you. This book has a depressing and heavy feel to it. This book played out in black and white for me. The vibe is: This cannot be real; this can’t be happening – and yet it is/did. We observe as one man feels it all – as it begins to sink in. I appreciated how the author tackled disbelief. I asked Ma once why her family did not flee Poland. Why didn’t they get out when they could? She said that they did not want to leave their land, but the main reason was disbelief. They never thought it could get that bad. They thought they would be saved. When they realized how bad things were – it was too late. This resonated for me in this book. This is a powerful book. It is tense, heavy, and also reminds readers of the author’s own journey. The author wrote this impressive book in one month in 1938, when he was just twenty-three. This novel was recently discovered and edited. The author lived a short life and he also had to move from one county to another with his mother before being interred on the Isle of Man as “enemy aliens.” He as then deported to Australia in 1940 and was permitted to return to England in 1942 but the boat he was on was torpedoed by a German Submarine. He was 27 years old. ***Hailed as a remarkable literary discovery, a lost novel of heart-stopping intensity and harrowing absurdity about flight and persecution in 1930s Germany Thank you to Maria at Henry Holt who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. |
