Category: Review

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.

Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker, 266pp, hardback.
I became aware of this book via a local literary festival. I missed the author’s talk but bought the book anyway as the subject ‘a journey through the Anglo-Saxon year’ seemed interesting.
The book draws on a wide variety of sources including poetry, histories and religious literature, to investigate how the Anglo-Saxons felt about the annual passing of the seasons and their relationship with nature. Some festivals from the Anglo-Saxon period are still celebrated today while others are long forgotten. Even the names of months and seasons have changed.
If you are interested in the period, or want to encounter some Anglo-Saxon poetry, this book should prove of interest.

The War in the West, James Holland, Bantam Press, 693pp, £25
Germany Ascendant 1939-1941
An interesting one-volume history of the early part of the Second World War. This book give a readable account of the war, as seen through the eyes of an number of participants on both sides. It also deflates a number of myths about the war, in particular about the strength and invincibility of the German forces. While the Germans had a formidable army and air force, their navy was small and their army was not as mechanised as the popular image of fast-moving Panzers would suggest. Germqn propoganda obscured the fact that they were less motorised than most of their opponents and their field guns were still drawn by horses. Germany also lacked the raw materials and other resources needed to sustain a long war. Bad planning ensured that the Germans lacked some useful aircraft types.
The French were better equipped with tanks and had an army of comparable strenth, a bigger navy and also an air force, but intimidated by German propoganda managed to defeat themselves rather than be defeated by the Germans. The French political establishment was split by internal squabbles and the army was consistently slow to respond and its leaders unwilling to fight.
Reading this book I was struck by several similarities between WWII and the Ukranian crisis. In both, a dictatorial leader acts ignoring the advice of his more cautious military staff, and takes over several countries before mounting an egregious attack on another counrry, forcing allies to respond. In both, the attacked country does not get as much support as it hoped for. The aggressor armed forces turn out to be less powerful than their propoganda persuaded their opponents they were. In both pre-wars, attempts at negotiation or appeasement turned out to be pointless.

Butler to the World, Oliver Bullough, Profile Books, 273pp, £20. How Britain became the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals.
The subtitle says it all. This is a very readable expose of the mysterious workings of international finance and how money moves around without any checks or supervision. After Suez, Britain having lost an empire was looking around for a new role, and found one in acting as a ‘butler’, i.e. providing services without asking awkward questions. Bullough describes institutions, structures and personalities with whom the general reader will be unfamiliar but which effect the secret movements of billions of pounds.
Bullough illustrates these murky dephs by means of a number of examples, of which one ‘The Scottish Laundromat’ will suffice here. US-based investigators advised the Scottish police about a crime in Moldova, where criminals had via a scam stolen a billion dollars from Moldovan banks and caused the money to vanish without trace. In turn one of the police tipped oof an investigative journalist, who confirmed that the last known destination of the money was an ordinary Scottish house in Edinburgh, home of a Scottish Limited Partnership, actually controlled by two companies in the Seychelles, where ownership of companies is a closely guarded secret. SLPs (with which few will be familiar) do not have to register their actual identity anywhere, making them the perfect tool for moving money around. The journalist uncovered many other instances of the nefarious misuse of SLPs. An official of the newly empowered Scottish National Party, Roger Mullin, was appalled by these revelations and took up the case. Investigators found that there had been a boom in SLPs, most owned by anonymous offshore companies, evidently used on an industrial scale for hiding stolen money. Mullin found strong indications that the financial services industry and Scottish lawyers would rather SLPs were left alone. So what happened? Nothing, except that by an obscure process the regulations were relaxed even further.
If you are disturbed by this and similar activities, you need to read this book.

A short history of Asia by Colin Mason, Palgrave Macmillan, 350pp. (3rd edition 2014)
The ‘short history’ covers the countries of the Far East, including what are now India, China, Indonesia, etc. Part I covers pre-history up to the pre-colonial era. Part II covers the impact of imperialism on these countries. Part III covers the post-WWII period, the end of imperialism and the resulting political turmoil.
Overall this is a most interesting read. This is not just a history of ‘great leaders’ as Mason points out the dismal conditions endured by the mass of the people – taxed to the max, subject to forced labour, famine and war, at all periods of this history. meanwhile the rulers often lived in great luxury.
In Part III there are reminders of past horrors – the French defeat followed by the Vietnam War, Pol Pot’s murderous regime, and the Vietnamese Boat People. Mason’s accounts of various countries in Part III are unflattering and often very revealing, with a litany of bad and oppressive governments that do little to relieve the miserable lives of the masses. Even Japan, generally regarded as a developed, democratic and progressive country, does not escape unscathed, as Mason points to corruption involving construction companies, officialdom and government.
The book concludes with some brief speculation on the future.

The Silk Roads – a new history of the world, by Peter Frankopan. 636pp

This is a history of the ‘Silk Road’ region of central Asia and the Middle East from ancient times to the present day. Successive chapters concentrate on different topics such as faiths, particular commodities whether furs or slaves or silver, while filling in the history of the region as the centuries pass. It is not a history of the ‘Silk Road’ as such, but a history of a region.

The second part of the book deals with recent history, and deals with the misdeeds of the British and the Americans in these countries as they competed with Russia in the region, putting their own national interests above the interests of the local peoples.

The critical tone may surprise Western readers, but after reading this you will understand why the inhabitants of Iran, Iraq and other places dislike and distrust the British and Americans so much.

Much space is also devoted to the rivalry between Britain and Russia for control of the region.

Frankopan also has an unusual take on the origin of the First World War, claiming that close to the start of the conflict it was still unclear which country would ally with which, in contrast to the way the war is usually depicted as a result of British-German rivalry. He suggests, controversially, that fear of Russia sparked the conflict, with Germany preparing war with Russia and France aligning with Russia, and that even in 1914, a realignment of Britain with Germany had been discussed in the Foreign Office. Before WWI, There had been tensions between Britain and France, a traditional enemy, and friendly relations between Britain and Germany, who shared an extended royal family.

Overall, this book is a fascinating read. Recomended.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, 4th Estate, 523pp

A novel which is at once beauifully written and a page-turner which advances its story with short, brisk chapters. It alternates between two characters caught up in the barbarism of the Second World War.  The female protagonist, Marie-Laure, is blind. As the Germans invade, she and her father take refuge in St Malo, a walled city by the sea. The male protagonist, Werner, is a German youth obsessed with radio and electronics.  Also in the story is a diamond so valuable that it has to be guarded from theft with the aid of three replicas. As well as the war the novel describes everyday thoughts and actions, and human kindness.

This is the best novel I have read in the past year. Highly recommended.

 

First to Fight – The Polish War 1939 by Roger Moorhouse, The Bodley head, 344pp

This is an interesting account of the invasion of Poland in 1939 by the Germans and then the Russians. The campaign has been neglected in other accounts of the war, and sometimes mis-represented. Britain and France had signed agreements to protect Poland from aggression, but when the Germans invaded the allies were slow to react, and realising the difficulties of a decisive intervention, they defended Poland with fine words, while the French made a token advance over Germany’s Western border, aiming to cause the minimum of casualties.

The Poles resisted bravely, many of them expecting Allied forces to come to their aid, and inflicted casualties on the Germans, but the Germans had far superior resources in armour, transport and aircraft.  It was impossible to defend the frontiers against attack from several directions, and impossible to make a fighting retreat when chased by fast-moving mechanised columns supported by aircraft.  The German airforce was able to attack at will, attacking troop formations, refugee columns and cities, causing many casualties and much destruction.

Polish difficulties were increased by ethnic minorities within their borders – Germans in the west and Ukranians and Belorussians in the East. The Russian invasion from the East facilitated by the Nazi-Soviet pact sealed their fate.  Both the Germans and the Russians behaved with great brutality, committing many massacres of Polish soldiers and civilians.

Postwar Poland remained under Soviet control, and most of the territory seized in the Soviet invasion was never returned to Poland, while to the West, Poland gained large territories, formerly German, on the Baltic coast.

A book worth reading if you are interested in WWII or Polish history.