The Year Is '42: A Novel [Hardcover]

Nella Bielski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2004

In this intimate novel about ordinary lives lived under the extraordinary circumstances of war, we meet Karl Bazinger, a sophisticated Wehrmacht officer who is living the high life in Occupied Paris. With his French girlfriend, his glamorous dinner companions (Coco Chanel, Jean Cocteau, and a suspected spy for the British), and his open disdain for the Nazis, Karl begins to attract the attention of the SS. He is drawn into further trouble when he receives a suspicious visit from Hans, his best friend from Saxony, who may be involved in resistance activities. To lower his profile, Karl requests a transfer to the Eastern Front and sets off on a journey into a very different experience of war.

As a terrible fate for Hans is sealed, Karl is posted to Kiev, where he discovers the extent of the Nazi atrocities in the region and begins to suffer from a mysterious nervous ailment. In the novel’s final twist, the ministrations of an “enemy” doctor—a beautiful, stoic Russian woman with her own painful history—will heal Karl and offer him a vital connection to hope and goodness in the midst of hell.

The Year Is ’42 communicates the enormity of war with immediacy and intelligence. Urbane, subtle, and elegiac, this small masterpiece captures the myriad gradations of moral position that war demands of those who serve, those who resist, and those who stand and wait.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Karl Bazinger, a Wehrmacht officer stationed in occupied Paris on a "deluxe tourist trip, paid for by the Führer," is sheltered from the cruelty of WWII at the opening of Ukrainian playwright and novelist Bielski's latest book. Surrounding himself with bohemian luminaries and eccentrics, the seductive and sophisticated Bazinger spends much of his time enjoying France, women and the occasional literary debate. Life becomes complicated when Karl's musings on the dubiousness of the German victory attract the attention of the SS, and grows even more so with a visit from Hans Bielenberg, an old friend likely involved in resistance activities. After a short trip home to Germany, a transfer to Kiev exposes Karl to the harsh realities of Hitler's regime; his visits to an underground Russian doctor, Katia, allow him a brief respite from the war's ravages. Bielski does a remarkable job of capturing the atmosphere in Paris, Saxony and Kiev during the war, but a plethora of characters and backstories muddle the plot and draw attention, and interest, away from Karl and his conflicted allegiance to his fatherland. The result can be frustrating, but Bielski's effort is intriguing, and this is a good book for readers interested in a more intimate view of WWII.
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From Booklist

For the Germans, 1942 was when the war changed: became bloodier, more chaotic, perhaps unwinnable. It is also the year cultured, cosmopolitan Wehrmacht officer Karl Bazinger would, under suspicion of collaboration with the French Resistance, head to the eastern front, where the horrors of war replace truffles and lectures on Yeats. The Ukrainians have high culture too, he learns, but as Katia (the doctor with the drifting violinist father) knows, they have their scars as well. The East, and perhaps his conscience, causes Karl to come down with a terrible skin infection, which covers everything except for his visible body parts. And, for a brief, poignant moment, doctor and patient heal each other, a gasp of peace amid increasingly bleak circumstances. The contrasts between Paris and Kiev and Karl and Katia's complementary trajectories are indeed illuminating. But Bielski's dialogue-intensive phrasing is very much the strength of this book, palpating a broad spectrum of moral issues with a subtle touch that grants much of this selection a hazy, dreamlike quality. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (November 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375422862
• ISBN-13: 978-0375422867
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,918,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, December 22, 2004

By 

I, Reader (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year Is '42: A Novel (Hardcover)

Nella Bielski's new novel will be noted for its ingenious plotting, concision of style, and use of historical scenes. But just as a life isn't a only series of discrete events but also a not completely comprehended network of perceptions, notions and emotions, this novel adds up to much more than its wonderfully handled novelistic elements. In this story, the historical and political forces of Europe, mainly during World War II, play upon the characters, moving them about; the characters push back with what is in their nature. It is their natures that are inevitable, not their fates. The same holds true for the voice telling this story. It withholds from us the too easy gratifications of character analysis and categorization; it offers the more rich pleasures of the feeling of experience, with its limitations and exertions. I approached this novel mainly because John Berger co-translated it -- and if you're familiar with his remarkable essays and novels, you'll also enjoy sensing his hand at work here.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Voilà un grand tour de force!, December 20, 2004

By 

Alan Grosbard (Los Angeles CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Year Is '42: A Novel (Hardcover)

This compact immersion into the souls of three principal characters struggling in the most hellish time of a still living generation leaves you bewildered that its author is simply too young to have lived these moments. You feel the sweat under the covers of a feverish student while her grandparents debate who can enter her room, you see the look of a bartender that lingers too long on a pair of his customers, you worry at a school boy's simple remark. It is the intensity of this environment that makes every moment a mystery. It is the deftness of the narrative voice which modulates with every character it describes that makes your heart pound when a door closes, not in the quiet of your home, but only in the narration.
It is so remarkable a book, that I am going to dust off the French dictionary which hides somewhere in our home, and tackle the work in the language in which it was written.
Merci bien Madam. Grace a vous, nous vivons un grand moment!
Alan Grosbard

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Sector Heard From, November 13, 2005

By 

michele clark - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Year Is '42: A Novel (Hardcover)

This novel is beautifully done. I immediately read it twice through. It's short and slightly elliptical. The first main character is a loyal German Army officer who fought in WW I and comes to hate and fear the Nazis. The second main character is a Ukranian pediatrician who was born in the old regime and lives through the 1917 revolution, its forward looking first fifteen years and then the repressions and horrors of the Stalin years. None of the above, however, really tells you what the novel is about because it's about the interior as well as the exterior life of the main characters.