Subject: FATHERLAND by Robert Harris

From: [email-masked] (Michael C. Berch)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 20:45:19 GMT

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  
[email-masked]