Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers
The journey of Private Andreas, heading back toward the Eastern Front with his conviction that he is in the final days, and then hours, of his life takes you into a world become small – there is a closing in. Facing death and yet trapped in the mundane. There is an inherent comment of the futility of war.
There is an intensity to his relationships – the intimacy of the friendship with priest Paul he has left behind, the two soldiers he befriends on the train, and Olina he meets in the brothel – contrasting and yet bound together by his introspection.
It is a short but dense book – in terms of word count you could probably have got through it in an evening, but I found the emotional intensity such that I needed to space it out over a number of days, probably, accidental, reading it in “real time”.
To have a story of an ordinary German soldier is unusual for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment