Customer Reviews

Shadow Without a Name: A Novel

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3 star:		(1)
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Like a game of chess where anonymous pawns are sacrificed, pieces swapped and humble pawns can be made queens, where strategy is all, this novel moves players and identities about on a board incomprehensible to the players/narrators but fascinating to the readers. Told in 4 voices that spread from WWI to the early 1960's and the execution of Eichmann in Jerusulaem, we see that names, identities and futures are swapped by games of chess on board a train to the Eastern front of WWI. But soon we find that all these disparate voices are united in the sense of belonging to one giant chess game whose moves they can not control and - even more - in the interconnectedness and yet shadowy strands that connect them all. The Shadow Without A Name is a book that combines intelligence, strategy and suggestiveness to convey the fluidness of personal identity and yet the way we all quest for a sense of who we are,and for a way to understand our role in the world. The Shadow suggested works on many levels - including the way we cast shadows on other's lives, and how those shadows affect us. The different voices are all distinct characters in tone, and yet the use of these voices is quite well done - there is no sense of choppiness to the novel as it progresses forward and through the past. While some of the action takes place during war, this is not a "war book", nor is it simply a mystery concerned with a simple crime. The structure of self and identity and the need to know what happens as a result of these overt and sublte games of chess will keep the reader following the game to the end of the book. If there is any weakness, it is that places are mentioned, but never fully evoked or felt, but this is minor when the people and plot are so compellingly drawn.

Life is an ongoing, premeditated chess game and those who live life move like pawns on the chessboard. The chess game that took place in a train at the dawn of World War I in Ignacio Padilla's book, Shadow Without A Name, irreparably changed the lives of at least four men whose identities became warped even after death. The novel cleverly evokes the question of identity and selfhood against the historical backdrop of the darkest period of the twentieth century, as men appropriated names of each other, shielded off past memories and adopted new identities in the hope of a changed, better destiny. It was a time in which the truth became shrouded by lies and the lies adopted as truth.

Four men contribute to the narrative, which, in an overlapping interval of time, recounted the sequence of events that spanned decades as well as continents following the chess game in 1916, between Viktor Kretzschmar and Thadeus Dreyer.

In 1957, in Buenos Aires, Franz Kretzschmar reminisced his father, Viktor Kretzschmar, who faced Thadeus Dreyer on a chessboard for a life-and-death game. The winner would take Kretzschmar's identity as a railway signalman in Salzburg and the loser would head to the Austro-Hungarian eastern front, which promised death. When Franz's father (the true and only Thadeus Dreyer whose name had been appropriated and incarnated throughout the book) won the game, little did he know the exchange of documents would lend him a warped identity though he saw the deadly wager as a promise of immortality. However he despised trains, Franz's father approached the job with unbounded enthusiasm and not the slightest of his despondency betrayed his imposture until he was found guilty of premeditating a train accident near Salzburg. He wasted away in a sanatorium upon release from jail, rendered unable to recognize his son, let alone Franz's revengeful efforts to restore his father's peace of mind.

Richard Schley was a seminarist falsely elevated to priesthood who attended to near-death soldiers and gave vespers in 1918. Schley met his childhood friend Jacob Efrussi who changed his name to Thadeus Dreyer, in the time of the pandemonium caused by the Balkans on the Austrian front in 1918. Efrussi (or Dreyer), who had stolen so many names and lived under so many identities, persisted in denying his real name. Another name swap occurred as Efussi agreed to stake his fate on a chess game with Richard Schley, who found Efrussi in the midst of ravages and brought him home from the front.

Alikoshka Goliadkin was an orderly of General Thadeus Dreyer during his rise in the Nazi reign. This man was the key to unveil the clandestine relationships between Franz Kretzschmar, Adolf Eichmann and Dreyer. At the time, Dreyer supervised the training of a small legion of impostors (doubles) who would occasionally replace senior party officials or served as decoys in public appearances considered high-risk. Goliadkin was the only man who knew the where about of Dreyer and his impostor team (which was reported to vanish without a trace) when the project fell out of favor with the Nazi.

Daniel Sanderson, one of the three heirs of Baron Woyzec Blok-Cissewsky who left an encrypted code in a chess manual that would resolve the whole mystery about the aforementioned men. The baron, took residence in Poland during his late years, turned out to be yet another incarnation of Thadeus Dreyer. The seemingly impregnable encrypted code embedded the secrets of the many failed attempts by Nazi officers opposed to Hitler's policies to destroy the regime from within. As Sanderson investigated the baron's connection with Eichmann, he became alert at the fact that a fourth heir who resided in a Frankfurt sanatorium existed!

This book presents a story within stories, twisted and shrouded. At each turn of a page, at each switch of narrator, the book challenges readers with the question: is the man who he says he is? I have to flip back and forth to make sure I do not have the slightest confusion of who is who, though it is sometimes inevitable to fall into the trap of which who I think the man is. Once I get used to all the name swap and appropriation, and the underlying connection or disconnection of all the Dreyer incarnations, the book is a tantalizing, suspenseful, mesmerizing read. The constant changes of identities do not lose the way. It is cleverly written, with finesse and attention to details. It holds your breath to the end. 5.0 stars.

As in the chess games which are at the heart of the action here, Padilla's characters move like pawns, often being overtaken by events and supplanted by other men as part of the grand, overall "game" of life. Padilla raises thought-provoking questions about the nature of selfhood here, as men appropriate each other's names, accept or reject the past which is connected with those names, and hope, ultimately, to change their destinies by living someone else's life. The reader must constantly question whether each character is who he says he is, and whether he really is who we think he is. Main character Thadeus Dreyer goes through several incarnations as Padilla connects him to seminal events of the 20th century: the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and World War I, the rise of German Socialism and World War II, and ultimately, the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann.

Four speakers give four overlapping views of the characters and action. Franz Kretzschmar, the first speaker, is living in Buenos Aires in 1957, as he recalls the history of his father, Viktor Kretzschmar, who lived another man's life after assuming another man's name. On a train going from Austria to the eastern front in 1916, he had played a life-or-death chess game with another man and had "won." The winner became "Viktor Kretzschmar" and lived out the war as pointman on the Salzburg-Munich train line; the loser became Thadeus Dreyer and faced almost certain death in battle.

Richard Schley, the second speaker, is a seminarian in 1918, when he sees "Thadeus Dreyer," whom he once knew in Vienna as Jakob Efrussi. Another chess game leads to another identity switch. A third speaker, Alikoska Goliadkin, is an associate of Dreyer during his rise to power in the Nazi era, and he connects Dreyer with Adolf Eichmann and with Kretzschman's son Franz, who may be part of a Nazi project to create look-alikes of powerful Nazi leaders. The fourth speaker, Daniel Sanderson, is an heir of Baron Blok-Cissewsky, who has left coded information in a chess manual in 1989, explaining some of the final projects of the Hitler era. The Baron, not surprisingly, is yet another of seven incarnations of Dreyer, and as Sanderson investigates the trial and execution of Eichmann and his connection to Dreyer, questions arise as to the true identity of the man executed as "Eichmann."

Padilla's plotting is obviously complex, but despite constant changes of identity, and twists and revelations throughout, the novel never loses its way-nor will the careful reader. The tight story line maintains its tension, and the author's ingenuity in manipulating characters and historical events provides constant surprises. The novel is very much an intellectual chess match between author and reader, and in this case, both turn out to be winners. Mary Whipple

I had heard that Ignacio Padilla was one of Mexico's promising young writers. When I purchased his book, I was expecting another book about "The Mexican Condition" or some new take on magic realism. What a pleasant surprise to discover a suspense novel set in Central Europe!

Padilla is not your average suspense or mystery writer. He is much smarter. In his ability to combine deep thinking with a simple but elegant style, Padilla reminds me of Borges. Yet he never leaves the shadow world as imagined by Eric Ambler and Alan Furst.

Break the swan's neck! No more flying burros! A new and very clever voice is emerging from Mexico City. A voice that complements Mexico's new generation of film makers.

Things, and characters, are not ever what they seem in this excellent novel. The novel has four different narrators, each with a different version of reality. By the time the novel is over, the reader realizes that probably all of them were lying in their narratives for they certainly were all lying as they lived their lives. The novel opens with the story of two men on a train during World War I. One man is headed for the front, the other, for a cushy, safe railroad position. They play chess with high stakes. If the soldier wins, he claims the identity of the railway employee, if he loses, he kills himself. The name of the soldier, Thadeus Dreyer, changes hands several times in the novel. The man who is Dreyer ultimately organizes the Amphitryon Project during World War II, where doubles for high ranking nazis stand in for them at certain public events. The novel is intriguing and labarynth-like, and will have you questioning every word of each narrator in your search for "truth". An excellent read.

With brilliant prose, Padilla enacts a complex scenario traversing several generations and nationalities. The theme is mixed identities and how we can delude ourselves as much as we can others. The complexity is enhanced by the use of chess-playing as an underlying aspect. Narrated by four men, Ukrainian, British and Austrian, we are led through the horrors of World War I to the bizarre loyalties engendered by the rise of Hitler in the post-war era. Chess becomes the means of identification and communication for men whose grasp of reality, no matter how forcefully it confronts them, seems to be slippery. Each character is haunted by dark memories and a bleak future. The futures, wholly Sophoclean, must be fulfilled. Only the ongoing confusion of identities offers any diversion from inevitability.

While Padilla's captivating prose maintains a riveting command of the reader's attention, closing the book results only in a terrible let-down. In the final analysis, the tale is pointless. Awareness of the rationale for the book comes late, as it should, but offers no solution for what Padilla poses as the essential issue. Who was the man stretching a rope in Tel Aviv in May, 1962? Was there a conspiracy by the Nazi leadership to distract pursuers at the war's end with doubles? Does it matter?

It is easy to be dazzled by Padilla's deft language ability. His sense of history is strong, exhibiting sound knowledge of places and events. He uses Sophocles as a model to deflect our attention from options and choices life offers. He manipulates the characters like a divinity. Even the swift changes of identity by the men don't appear as rational choices, but something imposed by Fate. These are caricatures of lives and not very good caricatures at that. These men are automatons, driven by dreams and memories, clumsy puppeteers at best. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Shadow without a name is a novel very much in the frequency of contemporary Mexican literature. Padilla, along with other writers, are responding to the initial success of Post-Boom narrative by taking over the market seduced by the folkloric version of Mexico (leaded by the nasty Like Water for Chocolate) through the usage of resources and topics that have nothing to do with Mexico. In the case of Padilla's novel, the plot is centered on a story of suplantations, beneath which lies an obscure nazi project to create doubles for political figures. Even though this topic sounds like a Michael Crichton novel, Amphitryon is far from such literature, due to the formal and stylistic construction. The book is very readable and, with the award it got in its Spanish edition, is likely to occupy a central place in Mexican literature. Nonetheless, readers should not wait a deep usage of the nazi topic, since it is only a pretext to develop a narrative strategy. I think the novel will eventually raise the question on the validity to rely on such historical facts to create a story that does not express the horror of the nazis on its full extent. Even so, the novel is a great book for the casual reader. We are only left to expect that the amazing narrative abilities of Padilla will produce a masterpiece in the future.

Originally published in Spain as Amphitryon (2000), Shadow Without a Name, the first of Ignacio Padilla's novels to be translated into English, was subsequently published in Great Britain (2002) and now in the United States. Born in Mexico City in 1968, Padilla is the cultural attache at the Mexican Embassy in London.

During World War II, "The Amphitryon Project" was one of the many failed attempts by Nazi officers opposed to Hitler's policies to destroy the Third Reich from within. The idea was to create a legion of lookalikes for the Fuehrer and his generals, to serve as decoys in the event of a military rout. Towards the end of the war, however, those responsible for the Amphitryon Project decided to use their imposters to replace some of the Reich's generals.

The novel begins, however, much earlier than Hitler's rise to power in 1933. In 1916, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire has "begun to dissolve into history as fast as a demon before evening Mass," two men, traveling on a train to the eastern front and the massacre on the Balkans, play a game of chess. The loser will proceed to the front lines and almost certain death; the winner will assume the other's identity and survive the war as a railroad pointsman.

Thus begins the sevenfold incarnation of Thaddeus Dreyer. Through the years, identities are exchanged, masks of deception are assumed in chameleon-like fashion, and forgery, fraud, deceit, and duplicity proliferate.

A major motif of this novel is that human beings are merely pawns at the mercy of fate. As Edward Fitzgerald wrote, in "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam": "'Tis all a Checkerboard of Nights and Days / Where Destiny with Man for Pieces plays: / Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, / And one by one back in the closet lays."

It comes as no surprise when Alikosha Goliadkin, one of the four narrators of this tale, expresses the cynicism of one who lives in a deterministic, nihilistic world, a world ruled not by order but by chaos: "All we have left to us now is to beat a path leading irrevocably to the destruction of the sacred, and to accustom ourselves to the idea that poetry has no place in the melancholy corner of the universe in which we have been imprisoned. . . . God, the ubiquitous, omnipotent player insists on reducing everyone to the state of miserable chess pieces."

At novel's end, we have reason to doubt the true identity of one Adolf Eichmann, architect and engineer of "the Final Solution," the wholesale extermination of the Jews. Was the man who was arrested in Buenos Aires in May 1960, tried in Jerusalem between April and December 1961, and finally hanged in Tel Aviv on May 31, 1962, actually a double produced by The Amphitryon Project?

On the plus side Shadow Without a Name is a sophisticated, intelligent novel for the literary elite. One needs Ariadne's thread, however, to negotiate the disorienting corridors of Padilla's labyrinthine maze. Otherwise, one will become lost in its twisting corridors, devoured by the minotaur of doubt. This, then, is the negative side: the novel is complicated, confusing, and without closure. Enter this dark domain at your own risk.

The novel is a progression of stories, each told by a different narrator, and written at a different time, but each casting light on the events and characters in the previous stories. The title, as well as the story names, seem to suggest that this is a philosophical novel about loss of identity. I don't quite take it away. It is a chilling, almost soulless evocation of the dislocations of 20th century central Europe, a time when nihilism seems most in tune with the world. Identities are not lost so much as stolen. It is written in a simple, effective style, and the plotting is ingenious and highly original. One of the characters, Richard Schley, battles for the remnant of his soul, and I enjoyed most the story narrated by him. Conversely, I found little to like or admire in the first story of the novel, so my advice to readers put off by that material is to stick with it, the rest of the novel is 5 star.

Like a great game of chess, Padilla's books is challenging, full of twists and turns, and beautiful in its structure. The book is comprised of 4 interconnected stories, each one playing off the previous one(s). Identities change, assumptions are altered, and previously understood histories melt away. Pay careful attention as you wend your way through Padilla's labyrinth. The journey is well worth it.