The Savior: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Eugene Drucker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 17, 2007

Set in Germany during the final months of World War II, The Savior is an unusual and illuminating story of Gottfried Keller, a young German violinist ordered to play for the inmates of a concentration camp by an SS officer conducting an experiment in resurrecting hope in Jewish prisoners. Out of fear and insecurity, Keller cooperates and even finds himself compelled by the temptation of manipulating others with his musical talent. As he continues to play for the inmates, guards, and officers of the camp, Keller's horror toward the perpetrators and their abhorrent crime begins to fade, revealing his own culpability. Drucker draws on his own musical expertise in The Savior. As he explores the character of Keller, Drucker interweaves riveting musical description and profound commentary on the composers and works throughout the narrative, including Ysaye, Hindemith, and most notably Bach's searing 'Chaconne' and 'St. Matthew Passion,' to remarkable effect.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Violinist for the magnificent Emerson String Quartet, whose interpretations of Beethoven and Shostakovich are unparalleled, Drucker has written a haunting novel of the waning days of WWII. When a Kommandant orders him to play the violin for an audience of near-death concentration camp detainees, young musician Gottfried Keller is forced to participate in a ghastly experiment with hope. Repelled, Gottfried reluctantly complies: it would have been easier to face a row of corpses in a morgue. Over the four days he serves as camp musician, Gottfried reminisces about his treatment of his Jewish former girlfriend, Marietta, and of his Jewish schoolmate friend, Ernst, a violinist who fled as the Nazis took power. (Drucker's own violinist father emigrated to the U.S. in 1938.) As the days wear on, Gottfried attempts to separate himself from the nightmare of the camp by trying not to comprehend what is taking place there, and it is here, Drucker intimates, that his culpability lies, especially as Gottfried begins to draw inspiration from his audience. Drucker writes lyrically about the music Gottfried plays (including Ysaÿe's L'Aurore), and his morality tale has bite.
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Review

"A moving, honest exploration of conscience; Eugene Drucker's description of music illuminates the text in a way that a nonmusical writer would have been incapable of. The test of a good novel is whether it stays with you afterward, and The Savior is a book you will not forget."

-- Kate Atkinson, author of "One Good Turn" and "Case Histories"

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st Simon & Schuster Hardcover Ed edition (July 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416543295
• ISBN-13: 978-1416543299
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,338,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A different approach to the horrors of the Holocaust, August 2, 2007

By 

R Schmidt (Honolulu, HI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Savior: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Savior is a novel about the Holocaust. Thus, it is sad, full of horror and terror, and unsettling. It could be nothing else.

Eugene Drucker takes a different tack in exposing the atrocities. A German violinist is making his contribution to the German war effort by playing in hospital wards to wounded soldiers, who don't seem to appreciate the soloist's efforts nor his escaping front line duty. Suddenly, the violinist gets orders to appear at a "work camp" to play for a select group of prisoners. As he plays, the soloist becomes aware of how the camp is run, how prisoners are treated, and his role in the fate of these individuals.

A huge part of this story is the violinist's path of discovery of the "rubber-making" plant and the sadism of the prison commander and guards. So is the violinist a part of this satanic process, or not?

Caution... be aware that you will not feel upbeat in any way at the conclusion of this novel. I felt lousy. And I wondered again, as I have in reading other accounts of this period, about our ability to act inhumanely to our fellows, and the issue of complacency during events such as this. To think that at one time all these guards were innocent children themselves, and what they became. Never again...

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spellbinding Literary Debut By An Emerson String Quartet Violinist That Offers A Profoundly Fresh Look At Nazi Germany's Evil, August 17, 2007

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Savior: A Novel (Hardcover)

In the closing days of World War II, somewhere in Germany, along the rapidly receding Eastern Front, a young brilliant German violinist is torn between his passion for creating great music from the scores of great German and other classical composers, from J. S. Bach to P. Hindemith, and bittersweet memories of two friends from a prominent music school, both extremely talented classical musicians who fled Nazi Germany nearly a decade earlier due to their Jewish heritage. He finds himself unexpectedly, in the service of the SS, after spending the war performing in hospital wards for injured Wehrmacht soldiers. Violinist Gottfried Keller endures four living days in "Hell", a Nazi death camp that, at first, seems to be a mere labor camp, despite its ominous signs and portents, that Keller recognizes almost immediately upon his arrival; such as its sickly, cadaverous, starving inmates and a room filled with shoes in a large, otherwise vacant, warehouse room that he glimpses by accident. The camp's charming and intellectually sophisticated, but sadistic, Kommandant orders him to conduct a macabre experiment: determining whether thirty inmates, who have almost been starved to death, can be brought "back to life" just by hearing Keller's brilliant, rhapsodic playing over the span of these four days. For a few fleeting moments, he earns the trust, and "friendship" of Grete, one of these inmates, and Rudi, a SS guard who befriends Keller through his own keen interest in and devotion to J. S. Bach's music. But these come at a psychologically bitter price, since Keller realizes that he is almost living vicariously through his "friendship" with Grete, a bitter semblance of his love affair with Marietta, the woman whose marriage proposal he had to reject, fearful of being ostracized by both the Nazi regime and fellow local citizens for being a "Jew-lover". He also recoils in horror after hearing the young SS guard's admission of having committed heinous crimes against humanity, while still expressing a sincere, heart-felt admiration for Bach's great choral works. But, in the end, he hears the guard, Rudi, wonder aloud whether Germany's great cultural heritage can withstand its recent plunge into barbarism, and its many crimes against humanity committed by Rudi and others of his ilk.

Emerson String Quartet violinist Eugene Drucker has admirably drawn upon his father's own heroic experiences in confronting - and then successfully fleeing from - the then relatively new Nazi regime for religious and political sanctuary in the United States. From these experiences which are compelling in their right, Drucker has made a most auspicious literary debut in fiction, using Keller's emotional and intellectual struggles with his personal demons as a fictional metaphor to look anew at Germany's cultural heritage, in the light of the Holocaust, wondering whether that heritage deserved its survival and transmission to later generations. It is indeed truly a most compelling exploration of the bestial horrors committed by the Nazis in the "defense" of the Aryan Race; one that is destined to become a classic of Holocaust literature. Drucker's emotionally riveting prose is truly both unforgettable and disturbing, especially in the scenes of the "selected" inmates listening to Keller's exquisite violin playing and finally, during the dark, horrific conclusion to the Kommandant's "experiment". Without question this is one of the most important books published this year in the United States, and among the finest examples of recently-published fiction that I've come across. It is truly an instant literary classic, and one which deserves ample awards for both itself and Drucker's beautiful, lyrical and haunting prose. Having enjoyed Drucker's exceptional musicianship as a violinist with the superb Emerson String Quartet, I look forward to enjoying too his excellent literary talents well into the future.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A TOUR DE FORCE!!!!!, July 12, 2007

By 

booklover "Kim" (New York,NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Savior: A Novel (Hardcover)

This a compelling story that is lyrically written and emotionally powerful. Eugene Drucker explores the fascinating theme of a man caught in the middle of the horrors of the Third Reich. The concept of the relationship of a performer and his audience gets pushed to an almost surreal extreme. The descriptions of music are extraordinary: BRAVO!!