Author: jralexanderauthor

The Sorrow of Belgium (Het Verdriet van België) by Hugo Claus (1983)

21st October 2025

The Sorrow of Belgium is generally recognised to be one of the most significant 20th Century novels written in Dutch. It is a long read – just over 600 pages – of which the first 40 per cent or so set the scene in 1939 with the remainder then taking the narrative through to the immediate post-Second World War years. Originally published in 1983, the 1991 Penguin Books translation is by Arnold J Pomerans.

The book is semi-autobiographical. The central character is Louis Seynaeve who, at the start of the war, is a 10 year-old living with his parents in the fictional town of Walle in West Flanders. (Claus himself was also born in 1929. He died by euthanasia – which was legalised in Belgium in 2002 – in 2008).

Although the war provides the overall context to the story, there is no obvious signposting in terms of specific dates. The reader is informed of the passage of time through the offhand references to major events: the retreat from Dunkirk, the German invasion of Russia; the assassination of Richard Heydrich; the Normandy landings and, as the tide of the war changes, “…the East, which crept closer on the map day by day…”.

The story has three main themes. First, there is the accommodation – or collaboration – of the inhabitants of West Flanders with the swift military success of the Germans in Belgium in 1940. The preparations for this begin in the previous year, as is evident when Louis overhears a conversation between two women: “I know for a fact there are people on this very street who have bought up hundreds of packets of coffee. And bags of salt. In case something happens…”.

The early stages of the invasion bring chaos and confusion – there is looting in the shops, the body of a suicidal soldier is found in the river Leie, a German aircraft strafes the town – but the Belgium resistance is short-lived and things settle down to a new-normal. Members of the Black Brigade – Belgian collaborators – are soon routinely playing cards in the local café.

Louis’s extended family makes the appropriate adjustments. The boy’s father, Staf – “Papa” – owns a small printing firm that does good business through its work for pro-German Flemish groups such as the Flemish National League (Vlaams Nationaal Verbond); his mother Constance – “Mama” – takes a job as the personal assistant to the local head of a munitions factory; an aunt enthusiastically opens her home to a group of occupying troops; an uncle makes a satisfactory living as a butcher selling meat of doubtful provenance…

Of course, from 1944 there is a price to pay when the Germans retreat from the advancing American and Canadian troops. For some in the family, there is the jeopardy of semi-formal judicial proceedings; for other family contacts, there is only the summary justice doled out by the so-called White Belgians and their supporting mobs seeking immediate retribution from suspected spies and collaborators.

Second, there is the broader question of the state – in both senses – of Belgium itself. The country’s defensive vulnerability is summarised in the early lament of another of Louis’s uncles when he is contemplating the German invasion: “We have never bothered any other country. Never in all our history. It’s always been the others who have brought their troubles here”. Within the country itself, the deep antagonism felt by the Flemish towards the French (whether in Wallonia or in France itself) is palpable throughout the book. This is evident on the very first page when Louis imagines that his Grandpa is chastising him for using the French word for thumbtack; “Do you have to call them punaises when we have a perfectly good Flemish word for them?”

The third theme is the development of Louis himself. It has to be said that, in general, he is not a sympathetic character: there is a hideous case of physical bullying of one of his young schoolfriends; after he joins the National Socialist Youth of Flanders (Nationaal Socialistische Jeugd Vlaanderen, NSJV), a Nazi youth movement, he struts down the street in his uniform barking orders and intimidating an elderly man; he is lazy at school – twice repeating years – and consistently disrespectful to adults, prompted perhaps by the deteriorating – at times, hostile – relationship between Mama and Papa and the mutual lack of affection for their son.

On the other hand, he gains some credit as he matures. He questions the strict Catholicism of his family and his Convent education; he leaves the NSYV after a short while; and, noticeably, he asks questions (to himself) about the validity of the chronic antisemitism that he sees around him. Most significantly, he becomes a voracious reader not only of approved books and newspapers, but of virtually anything he can get his hands on, including the “degenerate” books banned by the authorities. This sets him on what we can confidently assume to be his career path as a writer.

Not surprisingly, Louis’s teenage years also cover his emotional and sexual development. We are introduced to Bekka, a young gypsy girl, and Simone, the prim daughter of the local pharmacist, and invited to speculate on where these contacts with Louis might lead. However, it is someone else, totally unexpected by this reader – and almost certainly by Louis himself – who is responsible for the youth’s initiation.

This is an intense book that is not an easy read. The details of Louis’s teenage years – his father’s selfish hoarding of sweets, the unappetising food at meal-times, the gossip shared between his aunts and grandmother – sum to an existence of routine and drudgery, notwithstanding the external environment in which they occur. (The narrative is mainly presented through Louis in the third person, but there are sudden switches to a first-person perspective or, more challengingly, to sequences describing Louis’s dreams or imaginings.). In addition, there are many references to past Flemish politicians, writers and heroes that present the reader with an unfamiliar cast-list of historical characters, although this can only be the complaint of one who is uninformed about the region and its people. For the period covered by the book itself, the glossary of parties, groups and organisations in the Belgium and Germany of the time is a welcome feature.

Jaws by Peter Benchley (1974)

28th August 2025

It is now 50 years since Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Jaws took the cinematic world by storm, its combination of narrative conflicts, breath-taking shocks and special effects – aided by John Williams’s dramatically sinister score – relating how Amity Island in New England was being terrorised by a man-eating Great White shark. (Not just man-eating, but young woman-eating and little-boy-eating as well). This is an opportune time, therefore, to re-visit the original novel, written by Peter Benchley, which was published the previous year.

Familiarity with the screen-based adaptation makes it difficult to resist making comparisons between book and film. Not surprisingly, many parts of the storyline are common – from the shark’s initial assault on the unfortunate Chrissy Watkins through to its later destruction of the underwater metal viewing-cage belonging to Matt Hooper, the zoologist who specialises in fish life – “an ichthyologist, actually”, as he introduces himself on his arrival from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

The central character is Martin Brody, the Chief of Police, who, in the book, is a long-term resident of Amity, rather than a recent migrant from New York. (In contrast with the film, the novel’s Amity is a Long Island coastal resort). It is Brody who is faced with the story’s core dilemma: whether to close the beaches in the interests of public safety or bow to the pressures exerted by the local businesses, led by the mayor Larry Vaughan, to keep the resort open at the height of the tourist season on the assumption that the shark would (probably) have moved on to other waters. When he initially makes the wrong decision – resulting in the death of the young boy – he is faced with the desperate grief-stricken chastisement of the boy’s mother; I thought this worked better in the film, in which the confrontation takes place in the full gaze of the Amity public, rather than in Brody’s office.

Some of the film’s well-known scenes do not appear in the original. The shocked Brody’s famous line when he (and we) see the dead-eyed stare of Spielberg’s monster for the first time – “You’re gonna to need a bigger boat” – is absent, as is the terrifying account related later by the tough and embittered professional fisherman, Quint, of the fate in shark-infested waters of those several hundred sailors thrown into the sea when the USS Indianapolis was sunk by an Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo in July 1945.

But enough of the film. The novel has the advantage of being able to stretch the narrative out over time. We learn something of the contrasting backstories of Martin Brody and his wife, Ellen. We get a full understanding of how Amity’s year-round economy is totally dependent on the 12-week summer season. We also discover that Mayor Vaughan’s perspective is driven by long-standing financial obligations to his shady business “partners”, who turn out to have Mafia connections. On the downside, the pace of the story sags with another of its sub-plots: the short-lived affair between Hooper and the unhappy Ellen. Martin’s suspicions about this eat away at him in the second half of the book with the result that an initially uneasy collaboration between the local Chief and the visiting shark-expert turns into one of mutual loathing.

In some respects, the book reveals the period in which it is written. A conversation between Ellen and Hooper on their sexual fantasies develops into something really quite unpleasant. Likewise, whilst the few mentions of Amity’s (small) black population understandably focus on the low-skill work that the tourist season provides, the racial divisions of 1970s America can be detected below the surface. When Harry Meadows, the editor of Amity’s local newspaper, considers what the impact of a poor tourist season would be, his reference point is instructive: “[N]ext winter is going to be the worst in the history of this town. We’re going to have so many people on the dole that Amity will look like Harlem”. He chuckled. “Harlem-by-the-Sea”.

And so to the climax, which is also stretched over time. The final voyage of Brody, Hooper and Quint in their quest to find and kill the shark takes place over four separate days and this allows Benchley to build up the tension before the final thrilling confrontation between men and beast. I shall not reveal the outcome other than to say – breaking my earlier promise – that it is different to the film.

The Reader (Der Vorleser) by Bernhard Schlink (1995)

1st July 2025

When the 15 year-old Michael Berg is taken ill in the street, he is comforted by Hanna Schmitz, a neighbour in her mid-30s. She cleans him up and then accompanies him back to the home that he shares with his parents and three siblings in the suburbs of Heidelberg in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.

It is some time later, during Michael’s second return visit to Hanna’s apartment, that the pair begin their affair. They meet during the afternoons or evenings – depending on the timings of Hanna’s shifts as a tram conductress – with, for the former, Michael initially skipping school until admonished by her for doing so.

The relationship develops: Michael steals a silk nightdress for her from a department store; they go on a 4-day cycling holiday posing as mother and son; their afternoon rituals incorporate Michael reading aloud some of the literature that he studying at school. He is The Reader.

The first-person narration is given by an older Michael, looking back across several decades from the perspective of the present day (i.e. the mid-1990s). He notes the specific memories he has of those early weeks: Hanna putting on her stockings; Hanna on her bicycle with her skirt blowing in the slipstream; Hanna wearing the nightdress for the first time… Interspersed with this are Michael’s wistful reflections on the disappointments associated with the general passage of time: the failure to meet expectations, the yearnings for past happiness, the life unfulfilled…

The other reader – you or I – sense that, at some point, Michael and Hanna’s carefree and liberating relationship must be threatened, if not terminated. There is an early reference to “the knowledge of what came later and… what came out afterwards” which suggests that the affair will not just be compromised by the differences in their respective ages or by their desire to enjoy the here-and-now rather than make any medium or long-term commitment. When Hanna leaves the area without warning, Michael is both puzzled and distraught.

At the beginning of the second act, several years have passed and it is 1965. (The earlier part of the story is thus revealed to have taken place in the late 1950s). When Michael comes across Hanna again, he is a law student at university and she is one of five defendants being tried for war crimes. As a member of the SS, she was a guard at Auschwitz and then at a smaller camp near Cracow before, near the end of the war, being involved in a murderous forced march of prisoners.

I shall refrain from describing the evolving narrative any further from this point. It is here that Bernhard Schlink begins to address the profound philosophical and moral questions that, twenty years after the end of the War, were being confronted by Germany’s wartime generation (Hanna) and the generation that followed (Michael and, by implication, Schlink himself).

For the accused in the dock, there is a simple question, addressed directly to the judge – “So what would you have done?” – to which there is only a floundering and hapless reply.

For the complacent and self-righteous student, the perspective initially appears much more straightforward: “We all condemned our parents to shame, even if the only charge we could bring was that after 1945 they had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst”. However, when reflecting back later on the generational discord that characterised German society in the 1960s, Michael’s thoughts are clearly inconsistent. The view that “the real theme of the student movement [was] coming to grips with the Nazi past”, is immediately contradicted by “[s]ometimes I think that dealing with the Nazi past was not the reason for the general conflict that drove the student movement, but merely the form it took”.

For Michael, the failure to resolve these philosophical/moral issues arises at a personal – as well as societal – level. At the trial, whilst he has no residual feelings for his former lover, there is a clear inner tension: “[e]ven as I wanted to understand Hanna, failing to understand her meant betraying her… I could not resolve this. I wanted to pose myself both tasks – understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both”.

Likewise, when Michael realises that he is in possession of evidence that would shorten Hanna’s inevitable prison sentence – though not exonerate her completely – he is faced with the appalling dilemma of whether or not to reveal this to this judge, when Hanna herself quite evidently does not want it to be produced.

The role of The Reader itself becomes more complicated in the third act – in different ways, it is both Michael and Hanna – as the narrative moves towards its inevitable conclusion and Schlink examines the layering of generational experiences, not only between the different age cohorts but also within the same individual at different points of time.

The translation by Carol Brown Janeway is efficiently undertaken. The only note that jarred with me was Hanna’s use of “Kid” when affectionately speaking to her young lover. I thought that this sounded rather too American: too Humphrey Bogart, perhaps. I wonder if “My Boy” or “Young Man” might have been better options.

The Scarlet Papers by Matthew Richardson (2023)

28th May 2025

When Dr Max Archer, Associate Professor in Intelligence History at the London School of Economics, receives an old-fashioned calling card inviting him to visit Scarlet King in her Chelsea flat the following morning, it is not surprising that he is somewhat perplexed.

Max is a middle-ranking academic, whose career has stalled and whose wife, pregnant by her new lover, is seeking a divorce. His finances are low and he is currently reduced to renting a studio flat from a friend at a below-market rate.

Scarlet King, a lady in her 90s, is known by Max to have once been the top Russian expert at MI6.

The calling card instructs Max to “tell no one” and to “dry-clean thoroughly”. Thus, we are introduced to our first item of spy-trade jargon: “dry-cleaning” means to undertake counter-surveillance by shrugging off a watcher. Max duly takes a convoluted route to his appointment – glancing in shop windows, doubling back, heading down side-streets. He is unaware that, on arrival at Scarlet’s flat, he is observed, photographed – and identified – from the top floor of the house opposite by two members of the A4 Branch of MI5 who will report back to Saul Northcliffe, Deputy Director of the Security Service.

Scarlet offers Max the opportunity to authenticate her unpublished memoirs – written in the third person – which reveal two highly sensitive post-War state secrets, the publication of which would be highly damaging to Britain’s security services (and some serving officers, Saul in particular) and to the reputation of the UK Government as a whole. As one character remarks, “It would make Kim Philby and the Third Man saga look small fry”. For his part, Max realises that, whilst his involvement in the scheme could bring both academic kudos and significant riches, there would be an inevitable prosecution under the Official Secrets Act and a long jail sentence.

This initial set-up is only the starting point for Matthew Richardson’s impressively plotted narrative, which interweaves the personal stories of the main characters with major intelligence events – some well-known, others fictional – of the Cold War: the exfiltration of German scientists to the West after 1945, the Soviet penetration of the British and American spy agencies, the release of the Miktrokhin Archive of Russian secrets by a KGB defector in 1992, the assassination by the CIA of a “sleeper” being repatriated to Russia in 2010… These events are taken up to the near-present day: there are references to Putin’s nerve agent programme, Novichok and the attempted poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, whilst “[t]he 45th President of the United States was accused of being a Russian mole”.

Other members of the cast list make only peripheral appearances. I had a wry smile when, after the success of her first mission in Vienna in 1946, Scarlet is promoted to a new post in Section IX – Russian counter-intelligence – and meets her boss for the first time:

He extended his hand. She shook it and felt the grip lingering slightly too long. His eyes fixed on her. He had a loose-limbed charm about him, drawing people in.

“Philby”. He smiled again. “Everyone around here calls me Kim”.

I did sense that, on occasion, the author was perhaps overly keen to demonstrate the vast amount of research on which his novel is based. (The bibliography extends to over 50 references). For example, an episode set in the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris allows Richardson to offer his view on the eponymous post-War Nazi hunter: “… [T]he list of Nazis Wiesenthal claimed to have brought to justice was overblown… [H]e played little part in the [Adolf] Eichmann saga [his capture in South America] and… whole chunks of his life story were factually inaccurate. Sometimes, though… [we are] happy to believe the myth”. An unnecessary aside, I think.

Nonetheless, throughout all this, the reader feels in control – sort of – of the confusing and duplicitous world around him. We are not surprised by a key role in the story being played by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Nor by the close links to the intelligence community of a respected Oxford academic. We note the jargon and the acronyms and the betrayals and the surprises. And, as we might expect, the plot twists continue right up until the final pages, when the motives of the key players – and their fates – are fully revealed.

England Their England by AG Macdonell (1933)

24th March 2025

Donald Cameron is a 20 year-old artillery subaltern when he meets the older Evan Davies in a captured German pillbox on the Western Front in October 1917. The pair – a Scotsman and a Welshman – strike up a conversation about the English, whom they both like and respect, but also find difficult to understand. Donald refers to an eyeglass-wearing colonel who “had the wind up all the time except once, and that time he walked up to a Bosche machine-gun emplacement with a walking stick and fifty-eight Bosche came out and surrendered to him”. Another colonel was “a neat dapper little man who ate sparingly in order to keep his weight down for post-war polo”. Evan, an aspirant publisher, proposes that Donald contact him after the war so that he can commission him to write a book about the English.

Subsequently, after a high-explosive shell pitches near him in the Passchendaele mud, Donald spends 18 months in a “monster hydropathic” in Scotland recovering from shell-shock before going back to work on his father’s farm in Aberdeenshire. After his father’s death, Donald travels to London hoping to take up a career as a journalist as “there seemed to be no other profession which required neither ability nor training”. He is making little headway when a chance lunchtime meeting with Evan Davies in a Fleet Street public house sets him on his proper course.

England Their England describes Donald’s journey as he undertakes the post-war research for his book. The novel of AG Macdonell (1895-1941) is (mainly) one of affection and gentleness with an underlying wry humour. At the same time, we are in no doubt – from the opening chapter – that the author recognises that England’s recent history also has its darker side. His portrayal of the conduct of the war – the condition of the trenches, the gathering and use of intelligence, the decision-making of the High Command, the allocation of medals – whilst presented with a knowing sarcasm, also does not hide an underlying bitterness about the circumstances in which Donald and Evan found themselves. (In the First World War, Macdonell served for two years in the Royal Field Artillery before himself being invalided out of the army).

Although he is a naturally shy individual, Donald has an unerring – albeit also haphazard and fortuitous – ability to make a series of random contacts within the English middle classes, beginning with an invitation to a weekend house-party hosted by the wealthy (and formidable) Lady Adelaide Ormerode MP. Before “the company sat down seventeen to dinner”, he has somewhat bewildering conversations with a former President of the Trades Union Congress (who thinks Donald possesses some dark political secret), a glamorous film star (who thinks he is a major producer) and a servant (who thinks he is the centre-forward with Chelsea FC). Donald returns to London on the Monday morning “with a note-book full of notes”.

The following weekend, Donald finds himself in an XI raised by a newly acquired friend – Mr William Hodge, the editor of an Arts periodical – for a cricket match on a Kent village green. This episode is probably the most well-known in the book as it includes the description of home side’s ferocious fast bowler – “the blacksmith… tightening his snake-buckled belt for the fray and loosening his braces to enable his terrific bowling-arm to swing freely in its socket” – which invariably features in any anthology of cricket-related literature. The match swings one way and then the other in a highly unpredictable manner before reaching a satisfactory conclusion. At the end of play – and indeed well before that – much alcohol is consumed by Mr Hodge and his team and the day is an enjoyable one for all concerned. However, Donald has less success in drawing conclusions for his research. Notwithstanding the varied and idiosyncratic nature of the match’s various participants, “Donald got home at 1 o’clock in the morning feeling that he had not learnt much about the English from his experience of their national game”.

And so on through other adventures: a day spent as a guest at an upmarket Home Counties golf club, an assignment as the assistant of a British delegate to a League of Nations conference in Geneva, a temporary role as a London theatre critic…

It has to be said that some of Macdonell’s observations do not sit well with the modern reader. At the Geneva conference, a satirical description of some of the delegates’ responses to a report on “the barbarous conduct of the Hungarian Army in Yugo-Slavia during the Great War” is simply distasteful. Likewise, when asked by Donald about the British policy at the conference’s Committee for the Abolition of Social Abuses, an Old Etonian civil servant responds” My dear sir, we don’t have policies about things. We leave all that to the dagoes. It keeps them out of mischief”.

The latter is not the only incidence of casual racism – the background on a Major-General at the weekend house-party provides an even more explicit example – that obliges the reader to form a view about its presence in the narrative. Is it part of a straightforward descriptive context, reflecting the social mores of the 1930s, to which Macdonell is not applying any value judgement? Or is the author deliberately emphasising – and damning – the warped perspectives of some of the caricatured individuals in his cast-list?

The reader would no doubt advise Donald that the sporting world provides many insights into the nature of the English. When he sees the newspaper placards “England overwhelmed with disaster”, “Is England doomed?” and “Collapse of England”, Donald joins a lengthy queue to buy his morning paper fearing that some national calamity had occurred. It had, of course: England’s batting had collapsed in a Test Match in Melbourne.

Macdonell’s wry presentation of the winter sports is also revealing. Donald joins the crowd of 65,000– “thirty thousand young men, thirty thousand young women and five thousand parsons” – to watch the Oxford/Cambridge Varsity rugby match at Twickenham. The afternoon is one of heavy rain and winter gloom, the pitch turns into a quagmire and a dull 3-3 draw is played out. Two days later, at the Stamford Bridge ground of Chelsea FC, the Varsity Association Football game “began in bright sunshine at 2pm and was played throughout in bright sunshine. A brilliantly open and fast match, resulting in a draw of three goals each”. The crowd was four thousand.

Apart from the visit to Geneva and a return ferry trip from Kingston-upon-Hull across the North Sea to Danzig, Donald’s perceptions of England and the English are drawn entirely from his experiences in London and the South East. His judgement on Hull is that it is a “gloomy city…[a] dismal spread of squalor”, its sole redeeming feature being that “the town of Goole, seen from the train, looked even bloodier”. This assessment is no surprise to us as, earlier, travelling by char-a-banc to the cricket match, “Donald had been “enchanted by his first sight of rural England. And rural England is the real England, unspoilt by factories and financiers and tourists and hustle”.

Not that everything in the countryside meets with his approval. He is appalled – as are we – by the crass and obnoxious behaviour of the followers of the North Bucks Hunt, not least by their almost-comical hypocrisy towards animal welfare.

But we do not need to worry. The unpleasant encounter with the Hunt is heavily outweighed, on the other side of the balance sheet, by Donald’s experiences – revealing, poignant, uplifting – in the (random) contacts that he makes with other individuals on his travels: the entrepreneurial Yorkshire engineer, the elderly patrons of a village pub, a young schoolboy in Winchester (Macdonnell’s alma mater)… In their turn, each add to Donald’s knowledge of the English and provide him with confirmation of the admiration and respect that he had discussed with Evan Davies inside the Passchendaele pill-box.

Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway (2024)

14th February 2025

The front cover of this spy story boldly depicts it as “A John le Carré novel”. It’s a debatable point. Le Carré died in 2020 and the author – Nick Harkaway – is one of his sons. But, as marketing ploys go, it’s a strong sell.

There is no doubt that we are firmly – and reassuringly – in le Carré territory, however. The book is set in 1963, immediately after the climax of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). (Readers unfamiliar with the earlier book should be warned that its denouement is clearly revealed). There is a cast list of familiar le Carré characters – Control, George Smiley, Toby Esterhase, Bill Haydon, Peter Guillam, et al – about whom those familiar with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) will not find it easy to avoid casting their minds forward to future events. And, of course, there is the liberal use of the spy-trade’s jargon – the Circus, Cousins, scalphunters, safe houses – with which we can remind ourselves of our insider knowledge.

The story begins with a London-based secretary and PA – Susanna Gero – arriving at work to discover that her boss – László Bánáti, a literary agent – has disappeared. We learn quickly that both are Hungarian émigrés and – via Haydon – that Bánáti is really Ferenc Róka, a former Soviet-trained agent. He had fled the scene only a day or so before the arrival in his office of a hitman with termination orders from Moscow Centre.

Control, the Head of the Service, commissions Smiley to find Róka and to determine why it is that the Centre wishes to eliminate him after his many years of living a quiet life in London. Smiley’s mission takes him to Berlin and Vienna with support from Peter Guillam, the scalpel Tom Lake and – rather improbably, on Control’s orders, Susanna – before events move to the other side of the Iron Curtain. Woven into this narrative – and, it turns out, crucial to it – is the backstory of the new power in the Centre’s hierarchy, who wishes to eliminate Róka: Karla, the man destined to fulfil the future role of Smiley’s great rival across the ideological divide.

Interestingly – given the parallels with the beginning of both Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy and one of its sequels Smiley’s People (1979) – Smiley has to be enticed out of retirement (or near-retirement) to fulfil the brief, as he had taken responsibility for the disquieting events at the end of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Once on board again, however, he demonstrates his particular skills with his usual understated – and impressive – thoroughness. The episode in which he and Esterhase (remotely) access the conversation between two Soviet agents in a London hotel room is a masterclass. Likewise, when he and Lake are forced to shake off the attentions of some of the opposition’s agents in Vienna.

This is the era of Hillmans and Routemasters – not surveillance drones and mobile phones – and the pace of Harkaway’s story is steady rather than frantic. There is one high-speed car chase, though “high-speed” is something of a stretch as Smiley is driving a Trabant with a dodgy gear-box. More generally, the author provides sufficient space for the characters to breath and reflect and, occasionally, to consider the overarching validity of their chosen profession. For Control, “I want… to win. It is a war, after all, and if one must fight a war, better to win with all the unpleasantness that implies, than lose, and be subjected to the cost of losing”.

By contrast, Smiley is a more nuanced figure: “Literature tells us that sorrow is more profound than joy – a very Russian perception, as it happens. As I live longer, I’m more convinced that our valorisation of pain is what makes our world so bleak. We anticipate it, we approve of it, and in doing so, we make it. We need a better way”. We are not misled into thinking Smiley risks being vulnerably empathetic, however: when it is necessary, he is ruthless in achieving a given objective.

Within the le Carré oeuvre, there is a hiatus of a decade between the events of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the depiction of George Smiley’s long-range battle with Karla in Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy. This is an open window through which Nick Harkaway could supply further variations of “A John le Carré novel”. In common with – I suspect – most Smiley-watchers, I hope he does.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)

16th January 2025

Philip Roth’s novel begins with the nomination of Charles A Lindbergh as the Republican candidate in the 1940 US Presidential Election to stand against the two-time incumbent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Lindbergh is a fervent admirer of Adolf Hitler. His platform is based on a combination of “America First” – which involves staying out of the foreign wars that are now raging – and a virulent anti-Jewish philosophy. This is spelled out in a seminal speech made to supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, broadcast on the radio: “We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples [i.e. the British
and the Jews] to lead our country to destruction”. (In Roth’s chronology, this is a pre-election speech; Lindbergh actually gave it in September 1941).

The story takes shape through the eyes of Philip – 7 years old at its beginning – who lives with his parents, 10 year-old brother Sanford (Sandy) and cousin Alvin in a Jewish neighbourhood of Newark, New Jersey. His father – Herman, an insurance agent – has a prescient fear of what the future will hold when Lindbergh is elected President. His views are shared – initially at least – by Alvin who joins the Canadian Armed Forces to fight the Nazis in Europe.

A family trip to Washington reveals the previously latent anti-Semitism to which Lindbergh’s election has given official endorsement. In quick succession, this is demonstrated by a tourist at the Lincoln Memorial, a policeman, a hotel manager and a restaurant diner. On their return to Newark, Herman ruefully reflects: “They live in a dream and we live in a nightmare”.

We see that, at first, the undermining of American Jewishness takes place within the family. Philip’s Aunt Evelyn becomes the mistress of a prominent rabbi – Lionel Bengelsdorf – who is what in other political circles would have been called a “useful idiot” within the Lindbergh administration; to the disgust of his father, Sandy becomes a keen advocate of the Just Folks programme of sending young Jewish boys away from their homes (and closely knit communities) for work experience elsewhere, in his case on a Kentucky farm; and Philip’s parents argue about whether to flee the country for the apparent safety of Canada.

For the young Philip, there is the formidable task of trying to make sense of what is happening in the grown-up world around him, whilst passing through what otherwise would be a conventional childhood: learning to play chess with his neighbour, Seldon; adding to his prized stamp collection; stealing a football from a neighbour’s garden.

In the meantime, whilst events progress in the global conflict – Japanese forces making inroads into China and Burma (with India threatened), Germany engaging in total war with Russia on its eastern front and Britain fighting a lone hand in Western Europe (with no American support) – Lindbergh basks in his success of avoiding direct American involvement. He hosts the German foreign minister – Joachim von Ribbentrop – on a state visit.

As the anti-Jewishness takes a lethal hold across much of the country, there are attacks on homes and business in several cities, most severely in Detroit where a repeat of Germany’s Kristallnacht of November 1938 is enacted. A prominent Jewish figure is assassinated. This prompts the preparation for armed resistance by some of the Jews, notably the young toughs linked to neighbourhood gangs and organised crime. Herman is offered a gun with which to protect his family by a (non-Jewish) neighbour. The latter – an Italian nightwatchman – is a recent arrival in the locality when, in the interest of “assimilation”, the authorities undertake the forced removal of some Jewish families from their neighbourhoods for re-settlement elsewhere.

Philip Roth (1933-2018) was a native of Newark and – quite apart from the name given to his young central character – this is an emphatically personal novel. He moves easily between the claustrophobia of the Roth household and the wider events that have resulted from the presence of the aviator-hero in the White House.

We are invited to reflect not only on the implications of the wholesale capture of the law-enforcement agencies and the mainstream media by those in government, but also – even less easily – on the issue of assimilation of ethnic and cultural groups within a country’s overall framework and on America’s role on the global stage. And – surreally for the present-day reader, given recent comments made by President-elect Trump – on the speculation that the USA’s Armed Forces might launch an attack on Canada.

These are hugely significant issues, of course. It is surely one of Roth’s great accomplishments that – 20 years after the novel’s publication and as we wonder where current global and national events might lead us – they should continue to resonate so powerfully.

The Plot Against America contains a postscript comprising the author’s “note to the reader” and biographical summaries of the major historical figures in the work, including not only Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow, FDR and von Ribbentrop, but also Henry Ford, the broadcaster Walter Winchell and Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City.

The author begins the note by reminding us that this is a work of fiction. It is the flexibility provided by this imaginative form that enables him not only to portray a vivid account of an alternative American history, but also – in its final quarter – to present a dramatic shift in the narrative’s direction.

A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley (2022)

20th November 2024

One day in November 1851, Eliza Cargill – a recently widowed 20 year-old in Monterey, California – is approached in the street by a Mrs Parks. “Dear, if you find yourself in embarrassed circumstances, don’t hesitate to come to me. I think I can help you” offers the latter. A short time later, Eliza – having changed her surname to Ripple – duly takes her place in Mrs Parks’s bordello.

The madame does not encourage the girls in her stable to learn too much about each other but, separately, Eliza does strike up a close friendship with Jean MacPherson, whose own line of employment is to “attend to the needs of ladies, not men”. Jean, who for some of her clients dresses up in men’s clothes and calls herself John, claims to frequently encounter ghosts around the town though, to her frustration, she is unable to communicate with them.

Jean introduces Eliza to Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder in the Rue Morgue and so it is that when two other young prostitutes mysteriously disappear – followed by the discovery of a corpse on the bank of a river out of town and then the murder of one of Jean’s clients – the two women set about attempting to solve the crimes. Eliza, in particular, is captivated by the detective skills of Poe’s Parisian sleuth, Inspector Dupin. (Poe himself had died in 1849 at the age of 40).

In undertaking this task, Eliza and Jean largely have the field to themselves. When it comes to upholding the law and seeking justice in Monterey, the lead is usually taken by ad hoc vigilante groups, but none is established for this case. (Likewise, no effort had been previously been made to identify or apprehend the man who had fatally shot Eliza’s abusive husband – Peter Cargill – following an argument in a bar).

Whilst not exactly a one-horse town, Monterey has only a single sheriff (with no constables) for its official law enforcement and it becomes clear to Eliza and Jean that the girls’ disappearance is of no interest to him. When Eliza asks why they should investigate the case, when the sheriff will not, Jean’s response is immediate: “Because we have to. So what if we are beginners and have no idea what we’re doing?”

Jane Smiley presents the narrative with a light touch. By present-day standards, of course, Monterey in the 1850s would have been a hard – at times, grim – place in which to live, but the author does not dwell on this to any great extent. Similarly, Eliza’s daily routine would have been dangerous and unpleasant, albeit that Mrs Parks – a strict but sympathetic overseer of her premises – employs the capable Carlos as a permanent security presence during working hours. The author’s standard – if not coy – reference to Eliza’s sexual encounters is of her clients – townsfolk, sailors, adolescent boys – simply “doing their business”.

The historical context is similarly presented in a low-key way although, on occasion, it does seem as if there is an obvious checklist of reference points that must be included by the author. Hence, it is Mrs Parks who, for no obvious reason, refers to the first women’s rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848; a couple of characters refer to the inevitability of a Civil War between the Slave and Non-Slave States; and Eliza, having learned of the legal disputes surrounding the route of the railway from the East to California when with one client, raises it in pre-coital conversation with the next in what can only be described as slightly unusual verbal foreplay.

As for Eliza and Jean’s amateur detective work, there are times when the credibility is somewhat stretched. For a complete novice in this line of work, the former demonstrates a remarkable skill in matching some distinctive footprints behind a tree in a graveyard with, later, those in a muddy street following a heavy rainstorm. Inspector Dupin – indeed Sherlock Holmes himself – would have been impressed with such acute powers of observation.

The murder mystery is efficiently solved by Eliza and Jean, of course, with – from their perspective, at least – no loose ends left remaining. It seemed to me that their success was based on gut feeling and intuition, however, rather than the accumulation of any firm evidence. Moreover, a key twist in the resolution is based on the previous fateful acquaintance in another State of two individuals who had hitherto featured as separate characters in the story.

Jane Smiley has delivered a cosy narrative, the immersion in which allows us to be transported back to an earlier time in what is now the Golden State. However, the rose-tinting of some of the circumstances, combined with an overall flatness of delivery, leave the strong impression that there is much that has been left unsaid.

The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri (1994)

22nd October 2024

The Shape of Water is the first in the series of novels by Andrea Camilleri (1925-2019) featuring the Sicily-based Inspector Salvo Montalbano. The English translation in the Picador edition of 2004 is by Stephen Sartarelli, who also provides some informative Notes.

The narrative moves quickly from the start and maintains a brisk pace. The first murder victim is found in the opening chapter: Silvio Luparello, a well-connected engineer, discovered on a rubbish-strewn tract of Mediterranean brush – the Pasture, a site frequented by drug dealers and prostitutes – on the outskirts of Vigàta, Montalbano’s home town.

The victim being a prominent behind-the-scenes figure in Sicilian politics – as well as a wealthy businessman – it is inevitable that Montalbano’s investigation becomes embroiled in a tangled web of criminality, graft and corruption, this network of murky connections apparently extending into the judiciary and the Church. Running in parallel with this, the police also have to use their resources in dealing with a nasty tit-for-tat war between the island’s Cuffaro and Sinagra gangs; we are not spared the details of one particularly gruesome killing.

The Inspector solves the Luparello case, of course, using a potent combination of policing skills, imaginative intuition and some unorthodox approaches to the gathering of evidence, not all of which are technically above board. He is aided by his loyal subordinates, including the efficient sergeant, Guiseppe Fazio. I liked the latter’s appreciation of the effectiveness of the interview technique of another colleague, Giallombardo: “You know what he’s like: someone spends a couple of hours with him, talking like he’s known him for a hundred years, and afterward he realises he’s told him secrets he wouldn’t even tell the priest at confession”.

Camilleri does not hide his views – a combination of disappointment, contempt and resignation – on the general governance of Sicily, often expressing himself with a rich irony. The site of the murder is near to the ruins of a large chemical works that had opened “when it seemed the magnificent the winds of progress were blowing strong”. Now, however, the breeze had dropped altogether “leaving a shambles of compensation benefits and unemployment in its wake…. The old structures still soared, corroded by weather, neglect and sea salt, looking more and more like architectures designed by Gaudi under the influence of hallucinogens”.

It turns out that evidence found in the ruined chemical works has a crucial role to play in the development of Montalbano’s investigations. More generally, however, one also senses that the site itself represents the author’s use of an early metaphor for the overall context of life in Sicily: that notwithstanding any occasional grounds for optimism about economic and social progress, there is an inevitability about the dissatisfaction with the eventual outturn.

It is against this background that the dogged and admirable Inspector Montalbano maintains his efforts to solve crime and hold its perpetrators to account. In doing so, he might justifiably be seen as honouring the memory of those in Sicily’s actual police and judiciary – not least the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, assassinated by the Mafia in 1992 – who, with even greater courage and determination, paid the ultimate price in their pursuit of what they believed to be right.

HHhH by Laurent Binet (2009)

22nd August 2024

There are two-books-in-one in this novel by the Parisian-born Laurent Binet, translated from the original French by Sam Taylor.

First, there is a conventional historical thriller about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia – otherwise known as the “Hangman of Prague” or the “Blond Beast” – by the Czech Resistance in 1942 and the terrible revenge that was exacted by the Germans.

In addition – and interspersed throughout the narrative – there is what is effectively a commentary by the author about the writing of the book. This ranges widely, as Binet discusses his extensive (perhaps bordering on obsessive) research, his views on other novels and films that have covered the subject (including Seven Men at Daybreak by Alan Burgess, noted below) and his determined attempt to avoid the insertion of speculative (and unknown) details into a story that has its basis in actual events.

The historical context is set out with some skill, both in terms of Heydrich’s personal background and, more generally, the development of the war in Central and Eastern Europe.

After his initial naval career ends in disgrace and dismissal, Heydrich is recruited by Heinrich Himmler to head the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, the intelligence wing of the Schutzstaffel, SS). Part of this role – undertaken with unbridled enthusiasm – is overseeing the wholesale liquidation by the murderous Einsatzgruppen of those left in the wake of the progress of the German armed forces in Poland – “teachers, writers, journalists, priests, industrialists, bankers, civil servants…”.

By September 1939, Himmler and Heydrich have also taken over responsibility for the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) from Hermann Göring. Such is Heydrich’s reputation that, within the SS, there is a saying: “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich” – “Himmlers Hirn heist Heydrich”. Hence the title of the book.

The state of Czechoslovakia is abolished in March 1939. Slovakia, though nominally independent, becomes a satellite state aligned with Germany, whilst the Czech component – Bohemia and Moravia – is established as a German Protectorate. Heydrich is put in overall charge by Adolf Hitler in September 1941 with a three-fold responsibility: crushing the remnants of the Resistance movement; ensuring the full “Germanisation” of culture and language; and, crucially for the war effort, ensuring that the industrial base produces an increased output of desperately needed armaments for use in the war with Russia.

For the exiled Czech Government – headed by President Edvard Beneš – and its military advisors in London, a spectacular attack on the Nazi occupiers becomes a matter of urgency. Fearful of the nature and extent of any German retaliation, one possible target is Emanuel Moravic, a collaborationist Minister, but this is rejected as he is little known outside the country. Instead, it is decided to go for a more significant – indeed, the most significant – figure, Heydrich. I would have liked to have learned more about how this decision is reached as, at its heart, is the unavoidable moral dilemma of weighing up the benefits of success against the dreadful revenge that must have been anticipated, albeit perhaps not to the extent that actually occurred.

The mission is put in the hands of two exiled parachute commandos, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík – respectively a Czech and a Slovak – supported by the thin local network of Resistance members in Prague and elsewhere. It is a story of bravery, mishap, foolhardiness, luck (good and bad) – and betrayal.

The novel shares a characteristic with Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal (1971) – about a 1963 assassination attempt on President de Gaulle of France – in that the reader might well know the outcome in advance. (In the case of the Heydrich assassination, my own understanding of the events had previously been through a 1975 film Operation Daybreak, starring Anthony Andrews and Timothy Bottoms, based on Alan Burgess’s novel). However, this doesn’t detract from the heightened sense of drama provided by Binet, as the assassins finalise their plans, make their attempt and then seek to escape.

In its Vintage Books edition, the book does not contain any page numbers, but consists of no fewer than 257 “chapters”, averaging about a page each and with some only one or two sentences in length. I think this probably adds to the flow of the narrative, although I did also find that this was interrupted by one or two of Binet’s private insertions.

This is an important book. It tells us how, whilst the life of an evil man was brought to an end, the terrible times of which he was a central figure still had some distance to run. The German reprisals included razing the Bohemian village of Lidice, murdering some 340 of its inhabitants and obliterating it from the map – all based on false information that the village had had some sort of connection with the assassins.

However, the book also informs us that, in the post-war reckoning, these horrors were not forgotten. The modern village of Lidice is twinned with Coventry and there are neighbourhoods with that name across the world, including in the United States, Cuba, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and Azerbeijan. Such are the threads that link the Nazi regime and the Hangman of Prague and the Czech Resistance to a town square in Montevideo and a street in Santiago.