I liked this book, which surprised me because it's not what I thought it would be. It's really about a Nazi who wants to defect, along with his American girlfriend. I was on the edge of my seat through the entire book, which I couldn't put down. VERY well written, I like this author a lot. His book, "Munich", is a must-read, and I am enjoying his "Enigma" as we speak. As with all his books, I have to keep reminding myself, it's just FICTION. But it's really more; it's VERY entertaining.

Fatherland is set in 1964 Berlin with the Nazis still in power, having taken control of Europe but fighting a cold war against the remnant Soviets (east of the Urals) and the U.S. (who has defeated Japan but not fought Germany). A police detective and former U-boat commander, Xavier March, is thrust into a conspiracy that, if unraveled and revealed, could topple the regimes of Germany and the U.S.

Fatherland is a gripping detective thriller with a believable, complicated protagonist. I could not put this book down. At the same time, the author researched Nazi Germany and the Holocaust so well, every detail seemed utterly convincing and compelling (and in fact, he weaves in actual history and documents).

Fatherland is one of the best alt-history novels I've read. Highly recommended!

Fatherland is about a murder investigation by a German police officer, but in the scenario where Germany won the second world war and its in the 1960's. You have to factor in some things, such as if that had happened the world may not have been fully aware of the atrocities that the German Govt. were responsible for during WWII. With that in mind its a story of a German Detective and his investigation into a murder and its a fabulous story with easy to follow characters and plot. A WARNING !!!. If you see the name of the murder victim, don't look him up on Wikepedia as there is a good description of this book and the overall plot at the top of the page relating to the 'victim'. I couldn't stop myself and read it unfortunately. It didn't make too much difference but i would have rathered not known. Some of the detail of the German concentration camps is incredible. It was one thing to read lighter descriptions and generalisations about the camps, but Harris moves right into the actual events, citing actual documentation and that alone is worth reading to get a full appreciation. Overall an excellent book and well worth the read. (Just watch the Wikepedia references.)

Whether it's ancient Rome, or an alternative history of the Third Reich, Robert Harris does NOT disappoint! I thoroughly enjoyed Fatherland. Prior to reading the Cicero trilogy last month, I'd never read Robert Harris. He's an excellent writer and can hold the reader spellbound with his well developed historical mysteries. Currently, I'm in the midst of Pompeii, and look forward to reading all the Harris novels.

"Fatherland" is my favorite of all of Robert Harris's novels. The world he creates is chilling believable, perfectly rendered, and utterly terrifying. I can't recommend this novel highly enough. I read it when it first came out. Recently I reordered it (having lost my original copy by loaning it to a friend) . "Fatherland" not only stands the test of time. It feels prophetic.

Where to begin? Well, the book is alt his: in it, Germany won WW2 (although she's still fighting a lower-intensity war with the USSR somewhere along what would seem from a map to be the Volga, although a casual remark in p. 18 mentions "American -backed Soviet guerrillas east of the Urals", and there's another reference to "the dull struggle with the Reds on the Urals Front" in p. 84), developed the atomic bomb roughly at the same time as the US and ICBMs much earlier, and controls Europe trough a German-dominated European Community based on a Rome Treaty (in the West she has formally annexed only Luxembourg, and of course Alsace-Lorraine). Goering died in 1951, Himmler in 1962 (his successor is Heydrich, not assassinated in the Protectorate in this timeline, and rumored to be slated for succeeding the 75-year-old Hitler). Basically, the US having defeated Japan, and China being apparently a shambles, this is a bipolar world (German-led Europe and the US), complete with a nuclear stalemate and a Cold War (whence a to-be-held-summit, to seek détente).
Against this backdrop, on April 14, 1964, six days before Hitler's birthday celebrations and with the US President Joseph Kennedy (yes, the father) coming to Berlin in September for summit, a man is found drowned in the Havel. The case is investigated by Reichskriminalpolizei Investigator Xavier March, and what follows leads him to the realization, at the end of the book, that the Holocaust has indeed taken place: in Germany the official line is that "the Jews were sent East", but nevertheless mothers threaten rebellious sons with a "behave or you'll go up the chimney".

To say more is useless, as the book from then on becomes a mix of PP and thriller interspeded with seamlessly integrated flashbacks that permit you to partially reconstruct what has happened between mid-1942 (it's clear that the Germans captured Stalingrad and their summer Caucasus offensive succeeded) and the present murder, and then proceeds, always in a deftly depicted rigidly dictatorial police-state Greater German Empire, and at a stedily accelerating pace, to its (I would say open and deeply moving) conclusion.

I enjoyed the book enormously: for anyone intererested enough in the history of the period, finding names like Globocnic (who for example is mentioned -with a different spelling- once by Jodl, I think, to Hitler as a "real scoundrel", in Guderian's "Panzer Leader"), or allusions to episodes like the theft of Veit Stoss' altarpiece from Cracow's (Krakau in the book) Church of Our Lady, is to become aware of some as it were unknown intellectual friend (in this case Harris) who shares your interests, at least as far as having done -for a non-historian- an enormous amount of research, and with whom you could talk and learn from. For me, that's the key of my delight in the story: the amount of subtle details of a period that fascinates me. As for the purely PP part of the plot, that is, if you abstract from its subject matter, I agree there are some technically better books around, but not many with such a degree of suspense: this one is a real page turner.

Just to give you an idea of my tastes, I've read part of one of Turtledove's alt his series (the one that begins with "So Few Remain", in which the South wins the Civil War), but gave up after the 3rd or 4th volume ("Walk in Hell" or "Blood and Iron", I don't remember the titles, I gave them away): I just wasn't interested in the myriad subplots involving ordinary people, and there was too little macrohistory. I also read the first two books of a WW2 series in which the Japanese sink three US aircraft carriers and occupy Pearl Harbour, but loose the war anyway, which however lasts two years longer (I've forgotten the author's and the books' names). I quit for the same reason. But Harris' book is in a completely different league from them, and also from the scores of more detailed military alt his of the European theater of operations, Eastern or Western (by, say, Tsouras and his colleagues or imitators), or the fewer fully professional mil his, although for me they are more interesting than Tutledove's & alia microhistorical approch as they are more concise. It may seem a contradiction to downplay Turtledove's microhistory and praise Harris' subtle detail, but in the former events just happen, whereas in the latter there is a reason, a cause and and a fierce determination. Also, "Fatherland" is told in a very old-fashioned way: the good guys are clearly set apart from the bad ones, and there are no antiheroes; in the others, alt his is like real his, full of greynesses, contradictions and ambiguities.

Charlene Vickers and Justine Cardello have written however thoughtful one-star reviews, and they have valid points. So what's happening?

(1) As for the improbability of Charlotte Maguire's being a female "star reporter" in 1964 (not 1967 as CV writes), I agree it's a weakness in the plot. However, Maguire does say that nobody has heard of her agency, World European Features, and that it's an outfit with just two men with a telex machine in an office in the wrong side of town, and that she was picked as correspondent because she was the only one that could get a German visa. Besides, her father was a Liberal Undersecretary of State, so she must have got some political education and known some people. This doesn't detract from the value of CV's point, but shows Harris was aware of the problem and tried to minimize it.

(2) I think what they (and other reviewers) say about the Holocaust being impossible to conceal is debatable; it may be so in our world (but wait for the current crisis to deepen and the depression to really bite; then we'll see a dramatic increase in the revisionists' numbers). Remember also that even now most (I think) Muslims genuinely believe it didn't happen, as Turks to this day sincerely believe that the Armenian genocide is a fabrication. And European liberal intellectuals believed Stalin's gulags were a Western propaganda invention until the secret Khrushev speech. And how many US citizens are aware of the atrocities committed, say, in Vietnam? I'm not saying that they were due to a genocidal policy, but they were committed -and silenced-. How many are aware of Chomski's existence (again, I'm not saying that he's right, but his views about the US deserve a national debate). And how widespread was the American reaction to the French atrocities during the war for Algerian independence? And how many know that presumably 2 million Germans died when 16 million of them were expelled -whether justly or unjustly is beside the point- from their former homes? My point is, you CAN fool most of the people most of the time except in basic matters such as whether they have enough to eat or can repay their mortgage. I think media coverage determines what is considered to be PC or outrageous, independently of what's really going on. And this in our world! Think of another in which Germany had won the war! Everybody could have suspected (and did so) all right, but where would the aerial reconaissance planes have flown from? How many outside people would the Polish partisans have been able to contact? Who would have been admitted to the four Eastern Komissariats to count how many Jews, if any, really remained? And where would the archival evidence of the Nuremberg Trials have come from? Reread p. 206 of the MMP edition, where March questions Charlotte about the real fate of the "vanished" millions of Jews. The only info available in an mildly anti-semitic US comes from some half-deranged fugitives beyond the Urals, but the German Ambassador flatly denies their claims. "Pure propaganda", he says (and the Germans, after the British entirely false construction of the child-maiming, nun-raping, village-burning "Hun" image of WW1, had every reason to distrust foreign propaganda). Besides, deep inside, as is expressed several times, everybody more or less knows (i.e. Fiebes, in page 96: "A lot of [racial legislation] refers to Jews, and the Jews, as we know" -he gave a wink- "have all gone east"). And, most inportant of all, nobody, except a few very decent people like Marsh and Maguire, really cares, as Charlotte herself says. As for the US Jews not receiving news of/from their relatives, the Nazis never kept their racial laws secret: it was common knowledge that Jews were grossly abused, interned in concentration camps, deported, etc. The only secret was their systematic mass extermination. In our timeline, 2 million Gypsies were murdered alongside a maximum of 6 million Jews (not 14 million, as JC writes). Have you ever heard anything about it, dear average reader?
So I think that point, while controversial, shouldn't be considered an important flaw in the plot.

(3) Both CV and JC say that the characters are cutouts, flat, they don'e evoke any empathy. Well, that's a personal opinion. I really cared for March (although rather less for Maguire), Nebe didn't seem to be such a detestable german, and I even detected a mellowing of the regime in Krebs, the new-generation "gone soft" Nazi. De gustibus non est disputandum.

(4) Some other reviewers write that this story is a bad rehash of Orwell's "1984". Though to be compared with such a masterpiece would be no demerit, IMO Orwell's is a deeply philosophical novel (for me, its most important parts are the chapters of Goldstein's mythical book), whereas Harris' is an unabashedly alt his thriller, and nothing else. They belong to two entirely different genres. Furthermore, it's true that Orwell took his inspiration from Nazi Germany and the USSR, but his was a wild extrapolation towards power gone mad, whereas Harris pictures an earthy state governed by corrupt leaders and already in the process of being further corrupted by "softness" and boredom, March's son attitude and deeds notwithstanding.

(5) There are some inconsistencies (as for example the timing of Kennedy's visit, which at times seem inminent although it's 5 months away), but they are minor.

Summary: if you're like me, (definitely) buy and (hopefully) enjoy this book as much as I did a few years ago.