Author: Writer1

A New York Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin, Picador, 748pp

A magical realist fable set in an imaginary New York. In what seems to be the nineteenth century, Peter Lake, an orphan brought up by the primitive Baymen and now a burglar, burgles a grand mansion which he believes to be empty. However he encounters Beverly, the consumptive daughter of newspaper magnate Isaac Penn, and the two fall in love. Peter Lake is pursued by the Short Tails gang, led by Pearly Gates, who has vowed to kill him.

The book is rife with strange symbols. In the opening scene, a white horse escapes and gallops through the frozen streets of New York. A white cloud threatens to engulf parts of the city. Some scenes take place at the Lake of the Coheeries, an entirely mythical upstate lake. A generation or two later, the city is threatened and Peter Lake reappears. Wonderful stuff. You should read it.

Asylum by Moriz Scheyer,translated by P.N. Singer, Profile Books, 306pp.

This memoir was written while Scheyer, an Austrian Jew, was fleeing persecution in Austria and hiding in France. Scheyer was a significant literary journalist in prewar Vienna. Shortly after the Anschluss, he fled to Paris, only to make a failed attempt to flee the city when the Germans invaded. Subsequently he escaped to unoccupied France, only to find himself and his people in increasing danger from German advance and the Vichy round-up of Jews. A failed attempt to escape to Switzerland, incarceration in French concentration camps and contact with the Resistance followed. He survived solely because of the kindness of strangers who hid him, and he eventually found refuge in a mental asylum run by Franciscan nuns.

The manuscript was found only by chance long after the war. It seems Scheyer may have made some attempt to publish, but the top copy was destroyed by the family, who thought it excessively anti-German in the post-war climate.

The book blazes with white-hot anger against the Germans and against French collaborators, and expresses fears that the sufferings of the Jews would be forgotten. This publication (2016) should help ensure that they will not be.

This menoir is well worth reading if you have any interest in the history of the period. Since Scheyer was a professional writer, it is eloquently written.

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd, Elliott and Thompson ltd, 488pp.
“The rise of fascism through the eyes of everyday people.”
This remarkable book depicts the rise of the German Nazis through the first-hand accounts of visitors to Germany through the 1930s.
Many visitors were impressed by German modernity and progress and made repeated visits to Germany to enjoy the beautiful countryside and the historic towns and cities. Many visitors saw nothing of the dark side of the regime, or were willing to overlook excesses which they hoped would diminish with time. Other visitors had extreme right-wing sympathies and saw little to criticise in the treatment of the Jews and other minorities.
Today we prefer to forget how many prominent Britons admired Hitler and the Nazis, but there were too many of them to list here. Also not much mentioned nowadays is how the Nazis appeared to be inventing a pagan religion of Teutonic symbols to supplant Christianity. The Nazis made a point of presenting themselves as a bulwark against Communism, but if one compares the National Socialist and Communist programs it is hard to discern any difference.
This book is quite an eye-opener, but before condemning our predecessors one should perhaps reflect on how many people today are happy to holiday in countries with unpleasant regimes, or to trade with them.