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Written in 1992 but more timely than ever!

In April 1964, the discovery of the body of an old man floating in a lake on the outskirts of Berlin sends the police on a dark chase that seems to be tugging on the loose threads of a tightly wound and closely guarded 50 year old conspiracy. And, to be sure, the police procedural, mystery and thriller components of Robert Harris� FATHERLAND are well written and certainly will be enjoyed by any lover of the thriller or mystery genres. But the reality is that FATHERLAND is an alternate history. The meat of the matter and the real message is Harris� excruciating (and excoriating) vision of daily life in a 1960s Europe in which Hitler prevailed in WW II. This is a classic dystopian novel that earns Harris a place beside the likes of Orwell and Huxley.

FATHERLAND is compelling, frightening, evocative, thought-provoking and all too possible (if not probable). Contemporary American readers who have just lived through the presidency of a hateful man whose objective to convert the USA to a neo-Nazi Fourth Reich was all too clear should read FATHERLAND carefully and ponder their near-future evolution. Anyone living in a democracy needs to carefully consider the nature of the country that their beliefs, their conduct, their morality and their votes are going to produce. It isn’t likely that Harris intended to create a scene of almost tragic irony when he wrote of an American journalist taking a German police officer to task over the issue of human rights but, now, it is what it is:

“Human rights? � The millions of Jews who vanished in the war � sorry to mention them, but we have this bourgeois notion that human beings have rights.�

Trump, ICE and DHS obviously didn’t get the memo! FATHERLAND? Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss