The scion of one of America's wealthiest and most respected families, Jason Tull inhabits a world that is as close to paradise as anyone could desire. He's young, rich, and free to roam the earth in pursuit of his one great passion: to find a "Golden Case" of reincarnation--a case solid enough to impress even skeptics. When he hears about a young woman named Mallory Hastings who has wakened from a brief coma with an entirely new personality (and no recollection of her former one), he feels sure he's found it. The first secret he must have from her is, of course, her true identity. If she's not Mallory Hastings, then who is she? But pulling this secret from her proves to be like pulling the pin from a hand grenade. The explosion that follows opens a crack in the smooth surface of his world that no one will ever be able to paper over.
After Dachau
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
From the author of the bestselling novel Ishmael, 1992 winner of the highly controversial $500,000 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, comes this absorbing cautionary tale imagining a homogenous future society. In 1992 A.D., when the narrator, Jason Tull Jr., the dilettante scion of a famous, incredibly wealthy family, graduates from college, he decides to work for We Live Again, an underfunded foundation dedicated to tracking down and authenticating reported instances of reincarnation. After 10 years and hundreds of dead-end investigations, Jason encounters the case of Mallory Hastings, a 28-year-old librarian from Oneonta, N.Y., who, following a minor car wreck, regains consciousness as a deaf mute. Hoping he has finally stumbled onto the elusive "Golden Case," Jason gains Mallory's confidence. He is ill-prepared, however, to cope with the enormity of his discovery: the person now occupying Mallory's body is Gloria MacArthur, a Manhattan artist born in 1922 A.D. But this is only a hint of a dark, complex conundrum, for the "new" Mallory has scarcely learned to talk when she realizes that Jason's A.D. is not the Christian anno Domini. Quinn's provocative, Orwellian tale imagines that Adolf Hitler beat the Allies to the A-bomb in 1944 and set in place a chilling plan to achieve a world of Aryan perfection. In Mallory/Gloria's brave new world, 2002 years have passed "after Dachau," the chilling A.D. of the title. (Feb.) Forecast: Since the publication of Ishmael and its two companion volumes, My Ishmael and The Story of B, Quinn has gained a cult following. The added intrigue of a revisionist, Nazi-dominated history will likely rally fans, and Context's vigorous promotional plans, including a 20-city reading tour in March to support a 30,000-copy first printing, may extend Quinn's reach.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This disappointing, poorly conceived new fantasy novel mixes reincarnation, sf, Abstract Expressionism, and the Holocaust. The plot will be familiar to readers who know Quinn's most popular novel, Ishmael, the story of a telepathic gorilla and the dark secrets he reveals about man's conquest of nature. In After Dachau, the year is 4000 C.E., and a dark secret about human history is once again revealed, this time related to genocide. The Aryans have systematically exterminated every other race, and they have somehow been able to conceal the truth about this horror from the masses. Although Quinn's work in Ishmael and elsewhere suggests that he has had interesting and important things to say, this is not his best work. The plotting and characterization are very weak, and Quinn's observations about racism and bigotry, which might have redeemed the novel's other weaknesses, are, unfortunately, superficial and uninspiring. Not recommended. Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I picked up this book at 10:00 last night. It's now three AM, and I jusy finished reading it cover to cover.
After Dachau is simply that good.
A fan familiar with Daniel Quinn's other works, I was pleasantly surprised to find After Dachau to be a more carefully constructed novel than books like Ishmael. Instead of philosophy revealed through conversation, the reader is instead presented with an enormous metaphor.
The premise is simple: a wealthy member of the idle rich persues his dream by volunteering as a researcher at an institute that studies reincarnation. Assigned to a case in New York, he soon finds that nothing is as it seems.
Those who know Quinn's views of human history will likely be able to sniff out the metaphor early on, but After Dachau is accessable even to the average reader. Rather than a dystopic novel like "1984" or "Brave New World," which some of the reviews seem to liken After Dachau to, this book instead forces us to examine our past, rather than be concerned about our future (although a concern for the future logially follows examination of the past!)
I can highly recommend this book. It has the potential to take its place among works like "1984" and "BNW" in classrooms across the world, and it likely should be afforded such an honor.
Give it a read; you won't be disappointed.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Daniel Quinn's "After Dachau" is really two very different books in one, divided by a clever "trick." The first half is a suspenseful and exciting mystery story centering on the possible discovery of a truly documentable case of reincarnation. The two main characters find themselves on a journey of self-discovery as they explore what it really means to be an individual. If you're a fan of speculative fiction or psychological mysteries, you'll easily get wrapped up in the first part of "After Dachau."
Then comes the "trick." I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't yet read the book, but it's sort of a "Sixth Sense" kind of thing -- a plot trick that shifts the entire course of the novel and changes everything you've read so far.
After the trick (sort of after Dachau!), the book becomes a cautionary tale about what the world could become if we continue to live our lives as the selfish, entitled, "takers" we western white-folks really are (if this doesn't make sense, read "Ishmael"). It's not a bad cautionary tale, and even if you're not a DQ fan, you'll easily see the point he's making. But the book would have been stronger had Quinn stuck with a distorted interpretation of ACTUAL history (a new and frightening way to look at the world of the last 60 years), rather than the alternate history he gives us in "After Dachau". The world the two main characters face in part two of this book is NOT our world -- and as such, it's easy to step back and ignore the message. After all, WE didn't do what these people did. The world we live in today is NOT the world of "After Dachau."
What bothered me most about "After Dachau" was the short disclaimer Quinn placed at the end of the book, disavowing any interest or belief in reincarnation. Clearly the entire first half of the novel was merely a way of sucking in the type of readers who might be susceptible to his philosophy. Once you get past the mid-point (and the "trick"), you're his and the reincarnation story is dropped. Too bad. A really good novelist (without such an obvious agenda, perhaps) would have known how to integrate the story with the message. It would have made a better novel -- and, in the end, a stronger message.
It's a thought-provoking book, however, which is rare -- thus the four stars. Read it. It's worth the time, and you can argue with your friends about it afterward (what's better than that?)!
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I've read all of Daniel Quinns books except Dreamer. My favorite is Story of B as far as its ideas and realizations go. After Dachau is the best book by Daniel Quinn that I have read as just a story. He has proven himself as being a great thinker as well as a great writer with this book. Basically his books are MINDBLOWING. After Dachau goes even further by becomming almost disturbing to the reader. Even though the book starts out being about reincarnation it is really about alot more than this. Reincarnation is only the setting by which he brings out his other ideas and introduces the actual setting of the book. Things are not what they seem in the first half of the book. I don't think that it is necessary for people to have read any of Daniel Quinns other books to have read After Dachau. In fact, if you haven't read any of his other books then After Dachau will shock you even more. Believe me it's a real page turner; I read it in less than 48 hrs. If you like this book then you would probably also like Ishmael-Daniel Quinn's bestseller.
Muslim B
Most Recent Customer Reviews
page turner!
I really enjoyed this book throughout and it was a quick read. There was a message, or moral of the story, over-all I thought that tells the reader one very important thing about... Read more
Published 5 months ago by julsiekat
An Interesting Story with a Few Flaws.
This book has an interesting and very disturbing take on how History is written and distorted by the victors. Read more
Published on May 8, 2010 by Sean Mulligan
Padded, I fear
This book was over 200 pages (in large type) but was actually completely covered in Quinn's earlier book "Story of B" in which a character posed the question "what if everything... Read more
Published on August 15, 2009 by J. Bailey
Drawn out+inane+irrelevant+unhelpful ambiguity=After Dachau
The reason my eye was drawn to this book was because of the word "Dachau". I've been studying the Holocaust ever since I could read and I've even been to the concentration camp... Read more
Published on June 17, 2009 by T. Miller
curl into a ball...
is what I wanted to do after reading this book and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. It's frightening that what Orwell, Quinn, Bradbury, and Burgess wrote about are happening. Read more
Published on August 6, 2008 by misanthrope
Interesting idea... poor delivery
I have often thought about what would have happened if the Nazis had succeeded in World War II, so I thought that this book would be a very interesting read. Read more
Published on December 29, 2007 by D. Sato
A sloppy and lazy story
I give this book two stars rather than one based solely on the potential of the ideas at its core. Which is exactly why the book is so disappointing-- what a rich opportunity for... Read more
Published on May 29, 2007 by C. Hansen
I CARE
Another brillant book by Daniel Quinn. This book has an interesting and captivating story and I love the way he illustrates a very important and powerful message in this book that... Read more
Published on May 6, 2007 by Jennifer Esposito
a great book in its self...
daniel quinn is an amazing writer and the books that i have read by him are as easy flowing as the nile. Read more
Published on September 8, 2006 by G.Jones
"History is an agreed-upon fiction." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
What if everything you'd been taught about history was wrong? What if nothing had actually happened as the textbooks say? Read more
Published on August 9, 2004 by Monika
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
ALL CHILDREN OF the rich and famous grow up believing they were switched at birth for the infants their parents really wanted, and I'm no exception. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Miss Crenevant, Mary Anne, New York, Uncle Harry, Jason Tull, Mallory Hastings, Great War, Miss Hastings, Harry Whitaker, The New Negro, Tom Williams, Eddie Tucker, Grand Central Station, After Dachau, Middle Ages, Rita May, Ward Woolton, Edmund Dial, Hell's Kitchen, Hero of Dachau, Julius Caesar, New World New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
ALL CHILDREN OF the rich and famous grow up believing they were switched at birth for the infants their parents really wanted, and I'm no exception. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Miss Crenevant, Mary Anne, New York, Uncle Harry, Jason Tull, Mallory Hastings, Great War, Miss Hastings, Harry Whitaker, The New Negro, Tom Williams, Eddie Tucker, Grand Central Station, After Dachau, Middle Ages, Rita May, Ward Woolton, Edmund Dial, Hell's Kitchen, Hero of Dachau, Julius Caesar, New World New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 7
books:
See all 7 books this book cites
3
books
cite this book:
- Tales of Adam by Daniel Quinn in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Three Lives (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Gertrude Stein on page 188
- Roman Empire by Colin Well on page 109
- The Merchant of Venice (Saddleback Classics) by Emily Hutchinson on page 112
- My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn in Front Matter
See all 7 books this book cites
- Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath (War & Genocide) by Jonathan Petropoulos on 4 pages
- The Holy by Daniel Quinn in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Forgiveness and Child Abuse: Would YOU Forgive? by Lois Einhorn Ph.d. on page 137
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