Customer Reviews

Crabwalk

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Crabwalk is the first great book I have read that was written in the 21st century.

Why Crabwalk? Here's a definition of "crab:" "to move sideways, diagonally, or obliquely, especially with short, abrupt bursts of speed." Crabwalk's structure is similar. Grass offers a clue in referring to "scuttling backward to move forward."

Paul Pokreife, a journeyman journalist, narrates several parallel tracks: his life, his mother's (Tulla), his son's (Konrad), his ex-wife's, the ship Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi Wilhelm Gustloff (and his monument and remains), Gustloff's assassin (David Frankfurter), the Soviet submarine commander who sunk the ship (Marinesko), and Konrad's online challenger (Wolfgang "David" Stremplin) and his parents. Sometimes Mr. Grass jumps sideways sharing several stories at that time. Other times he jumps forward or backward to a different time or story. . . and then goes sideways to other stories. It's like stream of consciousness narration except it's finished prose and dialogue. . . rather than thought fragments.

This structure establishes many connections between one person and another to show an interconnected fabric of German society and consciousness since 1933 in the context of a few events, a family and a few other characters. I felt like I had just absorbed the richness of War and Peace . . . except in a relatively short and simple book.

Crabwalk can be read at several levels of meaning. The most compelling story relates the terrible tragedy of the sinking of the German refugee ship, Wilhelm Gustoloff, in January 1945 on the frigid Baltic by a Soviet submarine. More than 1200 survived while most others (estimated between 6,600 and 10,600) died from explosions, equipment faults, rescue mistakes, freezing, drowning, or the icy waters. Of these, more than 4,000 were probably children. There were only 22 lifeboats on board, and only one was launched properly. You'll have to read Crabwalk to appreciate the tragedy, but it dwarfs the Titanic. Yet it's a little-known event. The Germans made no announcement then to help maintain civilian morale. The Soviets were embarrassed and hid the event. Post-war Germany has kept a code of silence around any German civilians suffering as a result of the war, seeming to reflect the national guilt for starting the war.

Paul's being born the night of the sinking, aboard a rescue ship, links him to the Nazi past (through the anniversaries of the Nazi rise to power and Gustloff's death), the consequences of the sinking on the survivors, and the sinking's effect on the next generation of Germans. This connection is the bridge to other ways to read the book.

At another level, it's a story of a dysfunctional family: A woman who wasn't sure who the father is of her only son; a son estranged from his mother by her disappointment in him and his rejection of her values; a fatherless son becoming a poor father and failed husband; and a grandson reaching out to a grandmother for the emotional support his father fails to give him.

At a third level, Crabwalk is about the experience of the German nation since January 1933 when the Nazis took over. We go through the economic recovery years as Tulla's parents take a cruise to the Norwegian fjords aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff. Tulla grows up during the war and has a miscarriage while being a streetcar conductor. She becomes pregnant with Paul, and after the rescue are settled in East Germany where she becomes a carpenter and a devoted Stalinist. Paul escapes to the West as a teenager, and the two becomes estranged. Tulla also admires the old Nazis after East Germany falls and tries to fascinate her grandson with the ship's history. She succeeds through giving him a computer, and Konrad runs a Web site about the ship and the man it's named for. At the same time, you find out how Gustloff becomes a Nazi martyr after he's assassinated by a Jewish medical student in Davos. Ironically, Frankfurter's health improves by being in prison. He's released after World War II by the Swiss and heads to Palestine.

At a fourth level, this is a story about how our lives are influenced by our environment (our family, our nation, our history and our ways of perceiving).

At a fifth level, Crabwalk teaches us to think about the consequences of when and where we're born. If Paul had been born a few hours later, he would have spent his whole life in the western sectors of Germany rather than starting in the east. He believes his whole life would have been different . . . and it probably would have.

At a sixth level, Crabwalk explains that history repeats itself through the influences of the earlier generations on another. There are many deliberate ironies in the book as one character acts out variations on what an earlier character did (especially the way Konrad mimics David Frankfurter).

Ultimately, the book is about guilt. Who's guilt is it? And for what? What's to be done to atone? "History, or, to be more precise, the history we Germans have repeatedly mucked up, is a clogged toilet." "We flush and flush, but the [content]. . . keeps rising." In particular, should Germans deny their own suffering in World War II as a means to expiate guilt, or will that denial lead to new guilty actions?

The book profoundly expanded my understanding of the German experience. As a young man in Munich on business, I found my sleep troubled and interrupted by dreams and memories of Nazi marchers on the street outside, death camps in the countryside and murderous attacks on fellow Germans. Some taxi drivers who were old enough to have been in the Wehrmacht looked at me with obvious hate. Clients my age were very punctiliously correct anti-Nazis (we even visited events criticizing the Nazi past together). On the streets, young skinheads passed wearing swastikas. Crabwalk helped me to understand what was happening then and now.

This book describes the history of a ship and its influence on the history of a family. The ship is the Wilhelm Gustloff that was named after a Nazi who was killed in Davos, Switzerland in 1936. After its use as a cruise ship for the Nazi Kraft durch Freude movement, a floating hospital and a training ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed to the bottom of the sea on 30 January 1945 with on board between 6000 and 10000 (nobody knows the exact number) German refugees. On board is also the very pregnant Tulla Prokriefke, who goes into labour when the ship goes down. In the end her son Paul is born on board of a rescue boat.

Paul is divorced, mediocre journalist, who has, to say it mildly, a difficult relationship with his mother. One day he finds a site on the Internet that describes the ship that determined his life (his mother cannot talk about anything else). He finds that the site, with neonazi characteristics, is made by his son Konnie. And then the story goes almost inevitably to its dramatic conclusion.

The book is called Crabwalk because the story of the ship and the family are not told in chronological order, but by walking sideways. Still, the story goes forward, just like a crab walks. This is also because Paul tells the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff working with the information that he finds on the internetsite of his son.

This is a brilliantly written book, because one never gets lost between or within story lines despite the large number of considerable time leaps. Also, this book describes a little known ship tragedy (more than 5 times the numbers of death as the Titanic!) and gives an insight into the distorted minds of German neonazi's. An excellent read.

Scuttling sideward or backward, pincers poised, crabs walk defensively. After the collapse of the Third Reich, Germans have, according to Grass, crabwalked through time. Moving about with their feeble crab eyes, post-war Germans see their recent past poorly and defensively. Crabwalk addresses how a people, either while living under a brutal regime that created widespread suffering or as inheritors of that regime's legacy, struggle to come to terms with the past.

Although he focuses on Nazi Germany, Grass would equally apply his observations to other national catastrophes, such as those created by Stalin, Mao or Hideki Tojo. Thus he uses the worldwide web to emphasize how evil permeates all human societies.

Grass inserts himself into his narrative as a publisher asking Paul Pokriefke, an unaccomplished journalist, to write about the sinking of the "Wilhelm Gustloff". Paul's pregnant mother was on board the "Gustloff," a German ship carrying thousands of other war refugees, mostly women and children, as well as young sailors and military nurses, when the enemy torpedoed it. Almost all on board perished. Paul's mother survived, giving birth on the rescue ship. The "Gustloff's" sinking symbolizes the Third Reich's destruction and becomes a metaphor for Germany's wartime suffering.

Grass uses the Pokriefke family to illustrate how different German generations have struggled to accept their country's history. As the novella progresses, the characters crabwalk and reveal their shallow understanding of the Third Reich's history.

Tulla Pokriefke, Paul's mother, personifies wartime Germany, choosing to follow strong political personalities. She comically mixes up ideologies, with personal survival as her priority. In one moment, she asserts in high-German such superficial traditional German values as cleanliness, punctuality and industriousness, but suddenly switches to low-German to reveal an ingrained instinct to think in racist categories. She's incapable of understanding the larger consequences of her thoughts.

Paul, from the early post-war generation, vacillates among acceptable post-war political beliefs, left and right, with no real commitment or understanding shown for any of them. His politics spring from penance, not reflection. Paul would like to be the foundling rescued from the shipwreck, the history-less child whose mother and father will never be known. Everything German remains tainted. No probing questions about the past are asked, it's just rejected.

Konrad, Paul's son, is enthralled with Nazi Germany, demanding that its monuments be restored as legitimate historical relics. He doesn't want to reject his German past, so he becomes obsessed with historical research, collecting statistics and mountains of trivial facts. It's a dehumanized history of outward details. He exhibits what Grass calls a "versachtlicher Haß," or reified hate. (The translator's rendering of "matter-of-fact hate" misses the mark.) Konrad's view of history excludes any human suffering.

A lesser writer would have stumbled in creating characters that represent abstract principles, but still should to live and breathe. Grass develops his main characters admirably.

Grass' storyline is complex and is set in motion by the actions of three fanatics. Wilhelm Gustloff is a fervent Nazi organizer in Switzerland. He is assassinated by David Frankfurter, a Zionist. Hitler names a luxury cruise ship after Gustloff and the ship is later torpedoed by a Soviet submarine commander, Alexander Marinesko. Grass expresses his discomfort with obsessed people: "I've never felt comfortable with people who stare at one spot until it smolders, smokes, bursts into flame." The actions of these three people exert powerful forces upon the Pokriefke family, making them seem small in comparison.

The story shuttles effectively back and forth in time, ending at the trial and sentencing of Konrad Pokriefke. The reader's attention is held by Grass' ability to reveal engagingly new facets of his main characters and his ability to evoke a curiosity about what makes these characters act the way they do.

Grass' conclusion evokes at once optimism and pessimism: that while some people may overcome their historical blindness, there remain others who will quickly take their place. To me that seemed a sober way of insisting that confronting the unpleasant lessons of human brutality will be ongoing.

In January 1945, the German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk by a Russian submarine in the Baltic Sea, and took some 9,000 refugees with her to their deaths. In the late 1990s, journalist Paul Pokriefke, born to a survivor while the great ship was still sinking, decides to write about the sinking, which killed more people than any other maritime disaster and yet is invisible in most history books. But Paul must crabwalk through the story, scuttling between the past and the present, to look at the tragedy of the past and the echoes that are still ringing through Germany today.

I must admit that this is one of the most fascinating, and disquieting, books that I have read in a long time. Part of the book is history, which is both informative and heartrending (5 stars). The other part of the book deals with Germany, and the way that World War II affected Germany and still affects it today. It shows how many people did and still deal with the memory of the war, some praising and some damning what happened, and all trying to come to grips with it. This other part is gripping and highly thought provoking (also 5 stars).

I wish I could say more about this book. It is a lot to digest, and is resistant to any quick and easy analysis. Overall I thought that this is a great book, and I highly recommend it to you.

There is a reason authors receive the Nobel Prize. This book is an example of that reason.

It is a superb book, combining historic events (the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the murder of the Nazi official of the same name, and the rise of neo-Nazism on the internet) with the narrator's ties to family and his attempts to understand himself and his son.

It is disturbing, as good literature always is, because it raises hard questions. When is enough enough? Do we ever let go of past grudges? Wilhelm Gustloff, a Nazi organizer in Switzerland, is shot by a Jew who immediately turns himself in. Does that make either the perpetrator or the victim a hero? The murder receives enough attention that a ship is named after the victim. Near the end of the war, a Russian submarine sinks the ship in the Baltic Sea, at great loss of life. There are many civilians and children lost (literally thousands). There are also military personnel on board, and the ship still has military markings. Who is at fault here? Fifty years later the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, and it's obscurity relative to the much more famous sinking of the Titanic, becomes a hot topic among neo-Nazis on the internet.

It is all so real. It is all so believable (enter the name of the ship in a search engine and look at some of the things that come up).

Great art raises great questions. This is great art.

This short but engrossing novel is one of a new trend of German literature that starts looking less at German guilt and more to German suffering during World War II. Several authors have recently taken the call of W.G. Sebald to explore the reality of the enormous suffering inflicted on German civilians by the victorious allies. The point is not to deny German crimes or German guilt but to complete the historical record of World War II by presenting the viewpoint from the defeated. Grass unimpeachable moral standing helps along the effort started by Walter Kempowski with his series "Das Echolot" (no english traslation yet) and more recently by Jorg Friedrich in "Der Brand" about the allied bombing of German cities.

It is a testament to the indifference about the atrocities inflicted by the victorious allies, that the story of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" is so obscure and practically unknown despite the sheer number of dead, at least 5 times more than in the "Titanic". Grass treatment of the subject is not only factual, he gives us all the facts about both the ship and his namesake, but also is literary in a grand way. The story carefully interweaves the past drama of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" with the present drama of the narrator Paul Prokiefke. Grass resucitates one of the characters of "Cat and Mouse", Tulla Prokiefke, as a survivor of the tragedy and instigator of the tradegy of her own grandson. "Crabwalk" is as readable and compelling as "Cat and Mouse" and has a few susprising turns which makes it in my opinion the best literary effort of Grass since "Dog Years". One of its greatest attributes of the novel is that it treats a delicate subject, like german suffering during the World War II without moral ambiguities and absolutely excludes the possibility of being labeled "revanchist".

The events surrounding the biggest naval disaster in history and its tragic outcome are not an easy topic to bring to the attention of the reader of fifty-some years later. "Why only now?" is a good question and one that starts CRABWALK. The Wilhelm Gustloff, a "Strength through Joy" cruise ship turned refugee carrier, sank after a Soviet submarine attack on January 30 1945 leading to the death of more than 9,000 people, half of them children and infants. Although the details of the sinking have been known since then, there has been reluctance to publicize them. Grass has found a way to break the silence. At least one aspect of his motivation for doing so revolves around the disaster's aftermath in today's society and emerges clearly towards the end of the book.

Tulla Pokriefke, one of the survivors of the tragedy, cannot find words to describe what she saw on the ship as the torpedoes hit: "There's no notes in the scale for it..." Nevertheless, for years she has been insisting that her son write it all down - the way she remembers it. Paul Pokriefke, a second-rate middle-aged journalist, born on one of the rescue ships at the time of the sinking, reluctantly takes on the "job". He's pressured into it by the major background player, Grass himself. Paul timidly argues with Him about the format, scope and depth of his book. He is in favour of a neutral documentary on the ship, its history and its namesake, a Nazi "martyr" and hero. His disinclination to take on this project at all speaks volumes about his generation's reluctance to relive and confront all aspects of the German past. Paul is typical in other ways too... But He nags and guides Paul through the details: take the central theme of the sinking of the ship and trace its history; bring out the lives of the people directly connected with it; don't forget Tulla, yourself and your son - make it personal. The outcome is a description of historical characters like Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi activist, David Frankfurter, the German Jew who killed him in 1936, and Alexandr Marinesko, the submarine captain who sank the vessel, interwoven with Paul's and his family's life, from then to now. Three generations of Pokriefkes, deeply influenced by the disaster, have to deal with it and the wider Nazi history in their individual way. None of them is comfortable with their present-day life.

It takes a specially gifted writer and authoritative critic like Gunter Grass to make this tragedy public in a format that is meaningful today. Having referred to the sinking of the Gustloff in previous novels, "it seems that He knew Tulla when she was young", he had been reluctant to expand on it until he had identified the right fictional frame in which to embed the facts. He found it in the strong character of Tulla, 18 at the time of the disaster and turning completely white on that day, who epitomizes the successful survivor and practical realist of her generation. She remains in the East, seemingly switching allegiances without effort to the Stalinist regime, defending it long after the Wall has crumbled.

Gunter Grass' language and literary skills are undeniable; but his often difficult language (at least in German) and his complex imagery and use of metaphor have brought him admirers as well as critics. In CRABWALK, both the language and the imagery do not present any difficulty for the reader. In fact, the text flows relatively smoothly: it reads fast despite the subject matter. Walking sideways like a crab and "scuttling backwards" to move forward describes the flow of the story. Slowly the characters come into view and the different strands merge to form a comprehensive picture. Paul's more or less ongoing commentary about his writing efforts, his reactions to family and Him, his jumping back and forth in the story, results, at times, in a somewhat lighter, more conversational tone.

Grass deliberately uses the structure of a traditional `novella' (not specified in the English version) to convey the historical events and their impact on his group of Germans. An addition to being a `short novel', a novella is usually more tightly structured and focused on a single major event. It often comprises a didactic angle or moral message. All of these elements can be found in CRABWALK. Grass' message in particular addresses the after-war generation(s). He integrates into the story the recurrent problem of young neo-nazis, skinheads and the danger of hate websites on the Internet characterized through Paul's son Konny. He reflects on the inability of the parent generation to come to terms with the children as well as their own reality. He criticizes the lukewarm attitudes towards politics and history by many Germans of Paul's generation. He is concerned with what the future holds. The German word `Krebs' - CRAB also means cancer. Although not stated directly the reader of German cannot avoid reflecting on this connotation. Like cancers, totalitarian and fascist systems infect society, then go into remission, come and go. Can we be wholly cured of them? CRABWALK is on many levels an important book, which leaves you with ample food for thought. [Friederike Knabe, Ottawa, Canada]

Authors placing themselves in their own books tread on shaky ground. Few can negotiate the path with success. Grass, who has succeeded with so many other innovative efforts, accomplishes this feat with his usual mastery. Grass has lived through many January 30s, including Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933 and the sinking of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" in 1945, near the finale of that power. The date threads through the book in the figure of Paul Prokriefke, born on the latter date and the story's narrator.

Paul is an unwilling narrator, goaded into revealing hidden events by his mother and the unnamed "He" who intrudes on his idleness. Paul is beset on one side by Tulla, his mother who was on board when the Gustloff was torpedoed. On the other is Grass who restrains what he may write while persisting in his demand that the story be told. Paul is repeatedly confronted by his inadequacies. The greatest failure is his son, Konny, who has turned into a Nazi sympathiser and manages a Web site extolling the ship and the "martyr" for whom it was named. The stress Paul endures is palpable. Through it all, however, he comes to manifest what Grass wants him, and us, to see. Western history has ignored the world's greatest sea disaster in the loss of some nine thousand lives, mostly women and children, in the closing days of the Third Reich.

Grass, always a masterful prose exponent, has excelled even the superb works he's previously blessed us with. Using the metaphor of a crab's "scuttling from side to side", he moves between characters, time and events with unmatched ease and clarity. In just over two hundred pages, he exhibits absolute control of the narrative. No word is out of place, nothing omitted and the focus remains tight throughout the story. The theme is sorrow - the tragedy of so many dead, the horrors of war's pointlessness, the failure of the world to understand what has happened and why it must never be repeated. Grass makes us aware that people, ignorant of what war imposes on individuals, can be led to make the same mistakes again. This book helps us understand what we must do to learn the truth and what steps we must take to prevent recurrence. Otherwise, his final words will express the results of our failure: "It doesn't end. Never will it end". As his readers, we must refute that conclusion by assuming our responsibilities. The "ghost in the book" must be our chosen mentor, a role Grass undertakes gladly so long as we listen. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

While the Wilhelm Gustloff sank in the Baltic Sea after being hit by three Soviet torpedos, Tulla Pokriefke was giving birth to her son, Paul, on one of the few deiced lifeboats. As they floated away from what is thus far the single greatest loss of life in maritime history, Paul's cries rang out. From that day onwards, his mother, overbearing and overopinionated, unable to leave the ship for the rest of her life, considers that Paul's duty is to make the world remember the magnificent, doomed cruise liner, as the memory of World War II fades until only the great, sweeping events of the time remain in the mind of the people.

Paul Pokriefke is not able - or willing - to do this. He is aware of his worth, a man content with who he is and what he is capable of achieving. 'I know my limitations. I'm a run-of-the-mill journalist, who can do a decent job for short stretches. I used to have big plans...but for the most part my plans stayed on the drawing board. Then Gabi stopped taking the Pill without telling me, was soon pregnant, undeniably by me, and dragged me off to City Hall to get married. Once the squalling baby was there and the future educator had gone back to her studies, it was clear as day to me: From now on, don't expect much.' Throughout the novel, he never strays from this clear-eyed view of himself, of his place in the grand hierarchy of relationships, occupation and leisure.

His mother however, will never forget the Wilhelm Gustloff. Endlessly, always, she speaks of the sinking of the ship, detailing the sounds, emotions and feelings that she experienced. It was the great defining moment of her life, that others forget the ship is an implication that she, too, will be forgotten. What use for a white-haired old woman who harps on the past?

The reason that the Wilhelm Gustloff is mostly forgotten, even in modern day Germany, is almost certainly linked to its duties as one of the Nazi passenger ships allocated to the Kraft durch Freude (KdF), or 'strength through joy' program. The KdF allowed hard working Germans a chance for a good, clean, exciting and stimulating holiday for very little money. The intent was to provide a 'classless' experience, in that roughly middle-class leisure activities such as concerts, day trips and luxury cruises were available for anyone who could pay the extremely low cost. The KdF was an immensely popular German experiment, but the taint of Hitler's World War II, and the shadowy difficulties associated with the Wilhelm Gustloff, meant that it became a small portion of German Guilt that was best left behind. When the German people have such monumental issues such as Auschwitz, the Holocaust and World War II to deal with, it makes sense that a 'minor' incident such as the sinking of a ship filled with (mostly) non-combatants would be swept under the rug.

Paul, like many Germans of his age - for the novel is set alongside the advent of the internet as a popular medium, with Paul celebrating his 50th birthday in 1995 - chooses to forget the KdF, the Wilhelm Gustloff, the smaller portions of the war. He is concerned with being the man that he is, not a 'survivor', or the only child born on the ship on the day that it sank.

His son, Konrad, has developed a website that is devoted to the man from which the Wilhelm Gustloff cruise-ship received its name. Gustloff was the leader of the Swiss NSDAP party, and was assassinated in 1936 by David Frankfurter, a Jew. Konrad is outraged at the memory loss of his people, declaring Gustloff a great hero, and Frankfurter, a terrible enemy of the state. Paul, while idling browsing the internet, discovers his son's site, and is horrified at the vitriolic hate that spews forth from the anonymous webpage of his child. When a young man begins to post under the name of 'David Frankfurter', purporting to represent the ideals and thoughts of the original murderer, Konrad assumes the stance of Gustloff and the Nazi party in a way that will prove fatal.

Crabwalk, as a narrative, involves a 'scuttling backward to move forward'. Grass moves the story back and forth and roundabout through time. Generally, we are either experiencing firsthand the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, or we are involved with Paul's examination of the events in his son's life. Very rarely do we intrude into any specific portion of the novel which could be termed 'action'. No, Grass is writing a study, an essay, an examination of the ways in which the German people struggle with what has been done then, and what they need to do now.

Paul is a mouthpiece for Grass, a chance to extrapolate the metaphors of Germany that still form the core of that great, flawed country. Konrad is the hatred, the racial exclusion, the determination of the 'German way', regardless of cost. David, while professing himself a Jew, does not shy away from his own hatred, his own firm beliefs. In a way, they represent two sides of the same coin - they are strong-willed, determined, and will do anything and say anything to get their viewpoint across. Paul, a removed observer of their internet interactions, is the voice of reason, which is to say he doesn't have a voice at all. While Konrad and David spout grand theories and obscure facts, Paul is left in the middle wondering what to make of it all.

It is to be supposed that Paul represents that majority of thought and feeling within Germany. He is left bemused - and occasionally, amused - at the outpourings of Konrad and David, yet he does nothing to sway or intercept or stop their communication. The end result, when it comes, is one that is foreshadowed from the very beginning of the novel. The characters, as metaphors, simply must arrive at their intended goal, no matter the consequence, no matter the cost.

It would be dishonest to review a work of Gunter Grass' - and one as explicitly linked to World War II - without mentioning his 2006 admission of serving as a member of the Waffen-SS. This book, like all of his works, can be seen as an atonement, but also an explanation. With his writing, he is examining the German consciousness, struggling to understand how an intelligent, hard-working, cultured nation could produce such a dark time in world history. Grass may not have the answers - not for himself, and not for us - but he is more than capable of presenting his country, in all its flaws, with all its greatness. Crabwalk is a novel that is important for the message it holds, and for the honesty it shares. As Grass says, 'It doesn't end. Never will it end.'. We must remember, we must consider, we must think and study and learn from what has happened before our time, so that it does not happen again. We are all responsible.

Universality is at hand. This novel is one of the signs on our daily road. It speaks of one particular event in German history, the sinking of the ship Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30, 1945, hit by three torpedoes from a Soviet submarine. And yet it is universal. It entertwines the fates and lives of Wilhelm Gustloff, a small nazi dignitary in Switzerland, shot dead by David Frankfurter, a Jew, and after whom a Strength Through Joy vacationing ship was named in 1936, a ship that was torpedoed to death by Aleksandr Marinesko from his submarine. But the historical fact is captured through three generational layers of witnesses. First the Mother, who was a refugee on this ship on that day, pregnant too. Then her son who was born after the torpedoes hit their target, while the ship was sinking, miraculously rescued from nearly unescapable death. Then his own son, and the grandson of the Mother, Konrad, a whizz computer and Internet kid of 17. This network of crisscrossing testimonies and reactions and actions all reported by the miraculously rescued son is already fascinating. The Mother, after having been a clearly supportive nazi follower, turned into a militant and local dignitary of the SED, the communist party in East Germany, due to sheer circumstances, the last Stalinist in East Germany as she calls herself, and she is the ranting and raving memory of this fateful sinking. The son, after leaving East Germany through Berlin just before the wall was erected, marries and has a son of his own, but he gets divorced and the son is entrusted to his ex-wife who, after the wall has fallen, entrusts this son of hers in her turn to his grandmother who is going to raise him in the ranting and raving memory of the good old days, mixing up nazism and communism in one vision of a classless society represented in her mind by the Strength Through Joy movement. The ship was sunk by Soviet hence stalinistic torpedoes and she reverses what should be her hatred or frustration into a blind and absolute love for Stalin himself, and yet, deep under, she remains antisemitic and even anti-non-German, if not jingoistic, probably due to her coming from East Prussia, what is now Poland. Here we already have a lesson about humanity : commitments to this or that ideology is always personal and extremely brittle and fickle because dictated by circumstances monitored by the survival instinct. The book contains some vignettes about the gerneration of her son that are just as realistic : the 1945 baby-boom generation develops an ideology of pure non-committing middle of the road neutrality that explains so well what the world is today : unable to make any clearcut and longlasting choice. But the book becomes a masterpiece when we take into account the third generation, Konrad's. These are lost in total incomprehension and darkness : they have to situate themselves in life with no real committed and ethical models in the previous generations. The grandmother is a hitlerian turned stalinist, and ending her life with a living-room catholic altar with the Holy Virgin and Stalin in the places of honour. The father and mother are living in ideological limbos. A child needs commitment and a model to show him the way towards some ethical behaviour. In this case, Konrad follows his grandmother and finds in the Internet the possibility to recreate a clearcut ideological world through virtual reality. He starts a webpage on the Wilhelm Gustloff and develops his persona as a nazi or at least neo-nazi supporter, and finds in his chatroom-clientele someone who plays the persona of the eternally evil Jew, a certain David, who is no David and no Jew, but assumes this persona. This Internet trick enables the author to speak of the suffering of the German people at the end of the war, often increased by some war decisions of the Allies to hit, at times knowingly, some civilian targets like Dresden whose civilian areas, including the historical palaces along the river, were bombed with phosphorus while the enormous train station was not even menaced. But it would be short-sighted to reduce the book to that. In fact this Internet dimension reveals the need for young people to have adult models they can follow or not, hence to have committed adult models. It shows that the rising generation finds their models in the personae they meet and build for themselves on the Internet, and that these personae are going to be committed and ethical, in a way or another, often extreme, since no guidance among parents or at school is available. The book pushes the situation slightly further and imagines what may happen if such virtual commitments and personae were to meet in flesh and blood. And that is the best dimension of the book : they will reinvent what has been lived and experienced two generations ago by their grandparents, which means in Germany the conflicts and commitments of the 1930s and two subsequent decades. The book even seems to believe, at least Konrad seems to, that some kind of synthesis is possible in the concept of classlessness. The main conclusion we can draw from such a deep and yet short and quick book is that we have had it all wrong for at least one century, or, if you prefer, that history repeats itself all the time and particularly its mistakes that are maybe not mistakes, just the embodiment of the deep, bright or dark, impulses of human beings. I will say this book is optimistic, even if many may think these conclusions are particularly pessimistic if not provocative.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU