From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jul 23 11:18:30 1992 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!stanford.edu!ames!pacbell.com!pbhyc!djdaneh From: mcb@presto.ig.com (Michael C. Berch) Subject: FATHERLAND by Robert Harris Organization: Pacific * Bell Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 20:45:19 GMT Approved: djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com Message-ID: <1992Jul21.204519.20835@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> Sender: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) Lines: 77 FATHERLAND by Robert Harris Random House, New York, 1992 hardcover, 338pp, $21.00 Review Copyright 1992 by Michael C. Berch This first novel by London _Sunday Times_ political columnist Robert Harris is getting a lot of press, and while it may not seem obvious why >from the cover, it's apparent after you finish the book. Nominally this is yet another Nazis-win-World-War-II alternate history, and from the cover blurb and first few pages you might expect sort of a GORKY PARK meets HITLER VICTORIOUS, but there is much more here than it might initially appear. FATHERLAND is on its surface a detective novel: its hero is Xavier March, detective in the Berlin Kriminalpolitzei (Kripo). Twenty years after the Nazi victory in Europe in 1944, the Greater German Reich has settled into a relatively calm decade. True, there are guerrilla battles on the eastern borders of the Reich, and the Cold War -- a nuclear stalemate with the United States -- has gone on into a third decade. The Kripo is the middle level of the German police structure -- above the Ordnungspolitzei (Orpo) who deal with traffic problems and domestic disturbances, but below the Sicherheitspolitzei (Sipo), the security police, of which the Gestapo are the most powerful and feared arm. And so one grey morning a body washes up on the shore of the River Havel, and March -- SS-Sturmbannfuehrer March -- is called to investigate. Quickly, the intrigue begins, involving the Gestapo, an attractive American female journalist (who has her own opinions on the American president -- Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. -- who is arriving in Berlin to meet the 75-year-old Hitler and proclaim detente and an end to the Cold War), and various participants of the Reich's history (both real and imaginary). But the gripping thriller of a plot -- and believe me, it does keep you on the edge of your seat -- is not all that can be found in FATHERLAND. It does not take an exceptionally perceptive student of history and current events to discover unsettling parallels to the actual events of the late 1980's and early '90s. Not a few Europeans (nor Americans) are somewhat discomfited with the speed and totality of the recent German reunification, and there is a certain grim humor in reading a novel characterized by a European Community, a single European Currency, and a dense, efficient European transportation/ communications system -- all run by a Nazi German Reich. Beyond even this, Harris offers a meticulously-researched (he is the author of the nonfiction SELLING HITLER: THE STORY OF THE HITLER DIARIES), plausible, densely-detailed look into what a Nazi state might look like twenty years after the war. He almost completely avoids stereotyping all SS and NSDAP (Nazi party) members as hideous villains (an exception is the accurate portrayal of SS Oberstgrueppenfuehrer Odilo Globocnik -- "Globus" -- a true monster). March the character is both angst-ridden over the stress of his job and his lack of enthusiasm for NSDAP symbology and party activities, not to mention the breakup of his marriage and his inability to share the values of his young son. There have been many alternate-history novels focusing on Nazi Germany, and even a few detective novels covering this same ground (Len Deighton's SS-GB comes to mind), but FATHERLAND is a novel of the Nazi era with very much of a 1990s sensibility and uncanny relationship to the current events that are redrawing the map of Europe. %A Harris, Robert %T Fatherland %I Random House %C New York %D 1992 %G ISBN 0-679-41273-5 %O hardcover, US$21.00 %P 338pp -- Michael C. Berch mcb@presto.ig.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Sep 20 14:53:25 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!sun-barr!ames!ig!dont-reply-to-paths From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: FATHERLAND by Robert Harris Message-ID: <9209162250.AA16430@presto.ig.com> Date: 18 Sep 92 20:28:29 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Lines: 56 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) FATHERLAND by Robert Harris A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper Usually alternate history novels are written by science fiction authors, but every few years we see one by a "mainstream" author. And for whatever reason, they seem to choose the "what if Germany won World War II" scenario. In 1978 we had what is probably the best-known, Len Deighton's SS-GB: NAZI-OCCUPIED BRITAIN 1941; in 1980, we had Kenneth Macksey's INVASION: THE GERMAN INVASION OF ENGLAND, JULY 1940; now we have Robert Harris's FATHERLAND. The year is 1964. The Reich extends from the Caspian Sea in the east to the French-German border in the west. Western Europe is apparently joined in something similar to the Common Market which follows the Reich's lead (though the included map shows them as separate nations still). The president of the United States, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (yes, *another* alternate Kennedy story as well), is about to visit Berlin on the occasion of the Fuhrer's seventy-fifth birthday. And then the corpse of Joseph Buhler, high-ranking official (now retired), is found washed up on the riverbank near his home. In the course of investigating this death, Detective Xavier March is led into some of the best-hidden secrets of the Reich. Harris is the author of SELLING HITLER: THE HITLER DIARIES and therefore has a good background for this novel. (He did make one minor technical slip on page 73: although this takes place in Europe, dates are given in the American format [mm/dd/yy] rather than European [dd/mm/yy].) His extrapolations on the whole are reasonable (though I question the Beatles playing in Hamburg in Harris's world--does it seem a likely locale for the gay Jewish manager to pick?). If there is a weak point, it is in the secret the Reich is trying to hide. Without revealing it, let me just say that 1) it isn't a secret to us, 2) it doesn't seem to be a real secret to most of the people in Harris's world, and 3) I'm not convinced the Reich would be so concerned about keeping it a secret. Evidence in our world indicates quite the contrary. The result is that the book failed to involve me--I kept thinking, "This is supposed to be exciting, or at least suspenseful, but it isn't." It has some interest as an extrapolation of the Reich twenty years later, but whether that will satisfy the reader who is expecting a "taut thriller" is doubtful, and readers who find any suspense in the story won't appreciate the background. %A Robert Harris %T Fatherland %I Random House %C New York %D 1992 %O hardcover, US$21.00 %G ISBN 0-679-41273-5 %P 336pp Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jul 17 10:48:55 1995 Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if,alt.history.what-if,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.kth.se!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!news.sprintlink.net!gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news!nobody From: jacob@plasma1.ssl.berkeley.edu (Fungi from Berkeley) Subject: Fatherland by Robert Harris, a review Message-ID: <3u13cf$qbf@agate.berkeley.edu> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written,soc.history.what-if Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: U. C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 21:38:23 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 76 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se soc.history.what-if:1484 alt.history.what-if:17722 rec.arts.sf.reviews:799 Fatherland a novel by Robert Harris 1992 ISBN 0-679-41273-5 review by Jamey Jacob 1964; Nazi Germany. Enough said, you get the point. This is an alternate history novel on the genre's most popular topic: what if Germany won WWII? The story is set in 1964 Berlin, where the entirety of the city is preparing for Fuhrertag, Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday. But that is not the only special occasion. The president of United States, Joseph P. Kennedy, is meeting Hitler in Berlin to initiate detente and halt the Cold War that has waged between the two superpowers since the end of the war. Into all of this stumbles Sturmbannfuhrer Xavier March, homicide investigator with the Berlin Kriminalpolizei. A retired official prominent in the General Government (which replaced what had been Poland) has been found dead. Though it appears to be either a suicide or accident, March's instincts tell him otherwise. This and an order from the Gestapo that they are taking over the case. March refuses, of course, and later enlists the aid of a beautiful (of course) American reporter who discovered another suspicious death. March soon realizes that the Gestapo wants certain people dead, and only one man remains to tell him why. But nobody knows where he is, and if March doesn't find him first, the Gestapo most certainly will. This is a detective mystery, through and through, with the stakes a little higher than most. The story takes place within the week before Fuhrertag. Even so, the first half of the book moves slow, with details being few and far between. Once the head of the Kriminalpolizei, Artur Nebe, enters the picture with an ultimatum for March, the story begins accelerating the pace. The problem with this mystery, however, is that the reader already knows what the mystery is. This makes the task of story-telling difficult for the author. The carrot must come from the suspense and danger the hero experiences (the stick is, you bought the book, you might as well read it!) With this, Harris does fairly well. You get to know March and his motives and feel for his character. The ending is climactic and, to me at least, surprising. As for a historian's or alternate history buff's point of view, however, this novel is extremely lacking. Harris has created not so much an alternate history as he has an alternate reality. He only spends a few paragraphs on how Germany beat Russia and then he doesn't explain why things happened the way they did, just that they did. Harris has gone for the mainstream market, not desiring to bog down the reader with petty details of why things went wrong (or right). He is only interested in how things might have turned out if it had gone the way he suggests. The problem is, the picture he paints of 1964 Germany isn't all that gruesome or horrific. There are plenty of blindly patriotic people, but this is nothing new in any country in any time. The Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo, is still running amok, no surprise there. The Jews were still exterminated, the only difference is nobody knows about it now. What Harris lacks is a twist, something to hook those in the know with something new or unexpected. Unraveling this twist would have helped the first 3/4 of the novel tremendously. This is Robert Harris' first novel and only his second book. Knowing this, I look forward to his next work. All in all, a good weekend read. %B Fatherland %E Robert Harris %I Random House %C New York %D 1992 %G ISBN 0-679-41273-5 %O clothbound %P 338pp Common human laws and interests I have looked into the abyss, and emotions have no validity and the abyss has or significance in the vast looked into me. cosmos-at-large... Neither liked what we saw. -HP Lovecraft -Brother Theodore jacob@sunspot.ssl.berkeley.edu