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by Denise Giardina
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by Harriette Arnow
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by Denise Giardina
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by Terry Kay
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by William P. Young
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Sometimes the universe produces a man or woman whose life seems ready-made for fiction: Joan of Arc, for example, or Robert Falcon Scott; John Brown, Martin Luther King Jr., or Jesus of Nazareth. Fiction writers are attracted to larger-than-life personalities and each of the above-mentioned luminaries have indeed appeared in fictional works. Now German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer joins their ranks in Denise Giardina's novel Saints and Sinners. Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Breslau, Germany. As a young man, he found his vocation in the church, and his theological education took him to England, Spain, and eventually New York, where he spent a year in post-doctoral studies at Union Theological Seminary. He returned to Germany imbued with both the ideals of ecumenicalism and of the Church's responsibility to participate in social and political debate. These ideals, unfortunately, were hardly compatible with the rise of Nazism in the Germany of the '30s and '40s. Bonnhoeffer, true to his beliefs, spoke out against the Nazi regime, and participated in Germany's small Protestant resistance. He was eventually arrested for helping Jews escape to Switzerland and was hanged in the concentration camp in Flossenberg in the waning days of the war.
Sometimes the universe produces a man or woman whose life seems ready-made for fiction: Joan of Arc, for example, or Robert Falcon Scott; John Brown, Martin Luther King Jr., or Jesus of Nazareth. Fiction writers are attracted to larger-than-life personalities and each of the above-mentioned luminaries have indeed appeared in fictional works. Now German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer joins their ranks in Denise Giardina's novel Saints and Sinners. Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Breslau, Germany. As a young man, he found his vocation in the church, and his theological education took him to England, Spain, and eventually New York, where he spent a year in post-doctoral studies at Union Theological Seminary. He returned to Germany imbued with both the ideals of ecumenicalism and of the Church's responsibility to participate in social and political debate. These ideals, unfortunately, were hardly compatible with the rise of Nazism in the Germany of the '30s and '40s. Bonnhoeffer, true to his beliefs, spoke out against the Nazi regime, and participated in Germany's small Protestant resistance. He was eventually arrested for helping Jews escape to Switzerland and was hanged in the concentration camp in Flossenberg in the waning days of the war.
Denise Giardina knows the stuff of drama when she sees it, and in writing this fictionalized account of Bonhoeffer's life and death, she has drawn heavily on his own writings. Though she sticks to the facts where chronology is concerned, she does introduce three fictional characters into her protagonist's life as a means of illuminating his most private aspects. There is Elisabeth Hildebrant, Bonhoeffer's Jewish lover; Alois Bauer, his Nazi nemesis; and Fred Bishop, a black American seminarian Bonhoeffer meets during his year in New York who serves to politicize and radicalize the German theologian. After reading Saints and Sinners, readers might want to take a look at Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison, written during the last two years of his life, for a taste of the real man.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Protestant theologian, philosopher, and author executed in 1945 for his role in a plot to assassinate Hitler. In this first novel, the title of which is drawn from Bonhoeffer's Ethics, Giardina re-creates Bonhoeffer's story, from his privileged childhood in Berlin, through his travels abroad both before and during the war, to his final days in an interrogation prison. Fiction should have provided Giardina with the means of exploring Bonhoeffer's essence and engaging the reader in an understanding of his beliefs and motives. While Giardina captures Bonhoeffer's aloof and abrasive style, she fails to create a heroic or even compelling central character. Not all lives are suitable to fictional biography, and as Giardina herself writes in a postscript, "a collection of facts does not make an engaging story." Yet Bonhoeffer's story, told from a different perspective, could have been an epic morality tale of World War II. Recommended where interest warrants purchase.?Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll. Lib., Ont.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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- Bonhoeffer Phenomenon by Stephen R. Haynes on 8 pages
- The Bonhoeffer Legacy by Stephen R. Haynes on 4 pages
- Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Back Matter
- From Conduct to Character: A Primer in Ethical Theory by Todd H. Speidell in Back Matter
- Rick Steves' Germany, Austria, and Switzerland 2004 by Rick Steves in Front Matter
See all 12 books citing this book
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