Entry for Friday's Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott's blog Pattinase.
Berlin, April 1964. Nazi Germany has won World War II. Adolf Hitler is alive and about to celebrate his 75th birthday. JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, is President of the United States. Edward VIII is King of England. And a Cold War is brewing between the Third Reich and America.
Detective Xavier March of the Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo, is investigating the suicide or murder of a senior Nazi official whose naked body is fished out of Havel River on the outskirts of Berlin. The victim was one of the participants at the Wannsee Conference, held to gain political traction over America. March uncovers a sinister plot to eliminate the other participants which, I think, puts our protagonist on a collision course with the top echelons of the Reich.
The Wannsee Conference was actually held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee in January 1942. The meeting was called by Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Reich Main Security Office and one of the key architects of the Holocaust, to discuss "a final solution to the Jewish question." Heydrich, who figures in the book, was second to Heinrich Himmler in the SS.
Alternative history raises fascinating, and sometimes provoking, questions. Fatherland, the debut novel of noted English novelist and former journalist Robert Harris, weaves his 352-page crime-thriller around one of the most debated what-if scenarios—what if Nazi Germany had won WWII and Hitler were alive and ruling long after the war?
I have read only a few pages of the book so far and I'm already drawn in by Harris' fine narrative, both engrossing and darkly entertaining. In a way Fatherland, particularly the opening pages, has shades and starkness of Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park—picture Xavier March as Arkady Renko, post-war Berlin as Moscow, the discovery of a dead body (or bodies) in a public place, the Gestapo as KGB, and a government conspiracy to keep the investigation under wraps. This is my first impression.
Fatherland is first and foremost a detective-crime story. But what a setting in terms of scale and innovation! I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book.
In 1994, HBO made a TV movie based on the film. Rutger Hauer played the role of SS-Sturmbannführer Xavier March.
Robert Harris specialises in historical fiction and has authored nearly a dozen such novels. His upcoming thriller, Conclave, slated for a September release, is "set over 72 hours in the Vatican" and follows "the election of a fictional Pope."
Berlin, April 1964. Nazi Germany has won World War II. Adolf Hitler is alive and about to celebrate his 75th birthday. JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, is President of the United States. Edward VIII is King of England. And a Cold War is brewing between the Third Reich and America.
Detective Xavier March of the Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo, is investigating the suicide or murder of a senior Nazi official whose naked body is fished out of Havel River on the outskirts of Berlin. The victim was one of the participants at the Wannsee Conference, held to gain political traction over America. March uncovers a sinister plot to eliminate the other participants which, I think, puts our protagonist on a collision course with the top echelons of the Reich.
The Wannsee Conference was actually held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee in January 1942. The meeting was called by Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Reich Main Security Office and one of the key architects of the Holocaust, to discuss "a final solution to the Jewish question." Heydrich, who figures in the book, was second to Heinrich Himmler in the SS.
I have read only a few pages of the book so far and I'm already drawn in by Harris' fine narrative, both engrossing and darkly entertaining. In a way Fatherland, particularly the opening pages, has shades and starkness of Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park—picture Xavier March as Arkady Renko, post-war Berlin as Moscow, the discovery of a dead body (or bodies) in a public place, the Gestapo as KGB, and a government conspiracy to keep the investigation under wraps. This is my first impression.
Fatherland is first and foremost a detective-crime story. But what a setting in terms of scale and innovation! I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book.
In 1994, HBO made a TV movie based on the film. Rutger Hauer played the role of SS-Sturmbannführer Xavier March.
Robert Harris specialises in historical fiction and has authored nearly a dozen such novels. His upcoming thriller, Conclave, slated for a September release, is "set over 72 hours in the Vatican" and follows "the election of a fictional Pope."
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