The Washington Post
By boldly imagining a Hitler offspring that never was, Harry Mulisch signals his willingness to take real risks in his latest novel -- in terms of both plot and intellectual aspirations. — Andrew Nagorski
Publishers Weekly
What if Hitler had a son? Mulisch (The Discovery of Heaven) mixes philosophical reflection and psychological inquiry into an exploration of the single-minded quest of a Dutch writer determined to understand the source of the German dictator's terrible power. Revered author Rudolf Herter is in Vienna to promote his new book; during an interview, he suggests that someone as evil as Adolf Hitler could be "place[d] in a completely fictional, extreme situation" and thereby be better understood. Herter quickly becomes preoccupied by his own proposition, and by Hitler himself. After a reading at the National Library, an elderly Viennese couple, Ullrich and Julia Falk, approach Herter, suggesting that they have insights into Hitler. When he visits these "ancient people in this old-people's home," the Falks reveal the shocking fact that as Hitler's personal servants at his mountain retreat, they were charged with concealing Siegfried, Hitler and Eva Braun's son, born on Kristallnacht. Despite the book's title, Siegfried is a minor character; Mulisch is more concerned with the aging Herter and his drive to ponder the nature of the German dictator as a leader, father and as a "metanatural phenomenon," as "Nothingness." Herter's philosophizing-he makes much use of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer-is a bit on the self-indulgent side and strips the story of suspense; an italicized chapter revealing the inner thoughts of Eva Braun is unconvincing. Nevertheless, this slim novel is a thought-provoking read. (Oct. 27) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In 1999, Dutch writer Rudolph Herter arrives in Vienna to read from his latest acclaimed novel. There, in a television interview, he suggests that casting Adolf Hitler as a fictional character could be a tool to understand Hitler's inscrutable genius for evil. "Perhaps," muses Herter, "fiction is the net that [Hitler] can be caught in" and examined. Herter proposes to start Hitler's story "from some imagined, highly improbable, highly fantastic but not impossible fact." His words are heard by elderly couple Ullrich and Julia Falk, who seek him out to tell their own highly improbable, highly fantastic story-as Hitler's servants, the Falks raised Siegfried, the son Hitler fathered in secret with Eva Braun. Dutch novelist Mulisch (The Discovery of Heaven; The Procedure) thus sets the stage for not only a cerebral novel of ideas and an exploration of evil but also a story about storytelling, in which Mulisch draws on Teutonic lore, biblical stories, and fairy tales. The novel works well on all levels and is the kind of thought-provoking book that adventurous book groups might enjoy. Recommended for literary fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/03.]-Janet Evans, Pennsylvania Horticultural Soc. Lib., Philadelphia Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An "explanation" for the evil committed by Adolf Hitler is the quarry of this searching, somewhat discursive new (2001) novel from the internationally acclaimed Dutch author. The obviously partially autobiographical protagonist is Rudolf Herter, a prominent Dutch novelist who at the story's outset arrives in Vienna to give a public reading at the National Library and a lengthy television interview. Herter is thereafter contacted by Ulrich and Julia Falk, an elderly Austrian couple, who have heard the author speculate to his TV interviewer that the enigma of Hitler might be approached by making the dictator a character in a fictional "fantasy" not specifically related to the Fuhrer's own history. The Falks have a real story to tell: that they worked for Hitler at his Bavarian retreat Berchtesgaden and were commanded to raise as their own son the eponymous child of Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun. Mulisch (The Procedure, 2001, etc.) handles this explosive premise with great skill, moving artfully from the Falkses' hesitant, guilty disclosures to the unraveling of Herter's certainties about his own rationality. The suggestion of a soulless "black hole" impervious to comprehension grinds painfully against the novelist's impulse to tame and order chaotic human behavior, in a synthesis of ideas not notably inferior to that presented in Mulisch's unruly 1996 masterpiece, The Discovery of Heaven (alluded to slyly here as Herter's major work, The Invention of Love). Suspense is maintained even when the tale grows meditative or talky, and Mulisch plays expertly with readers' expectations in its final sequence, which presents revealing excerpts from a diary of Eva Braun's that is perhapsauthentic, perhaps Rudolf Herter's crowning, compromising "invention." Few if any other living novelists could make such potentially intractable material so thrillingly dramatic and provocative. One of the world's great writers continues his steady march toward a Nobel Prize.
