THE GREEN KING

by Paul-Loup Sulitzer ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1984

The 1945-1980 career of ""the richest man in the world""--from post WW II vengeance (fairly gripping) to financial transactions in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies (increasingly dull). When US soldiers come to the Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945, young first lieutenant David Settiniaz sees a living face amid a heap of murdered bodies: this is 17-year-old Reb Michael Klimrod, a half-Jewish, Austrian orphan--and an aloof super-hero whose every move will be breathlessly followed over the next 30 years. Once recovered from severe malnutrition, Klimrod (who survived till '45 by becoming a Nazi's homosexual plaything) sets out on an implacable revenge trail: he learns the horrific details of his invalid-father's death (in a hideous Nazi medical-experiment); he works with the Irgun, showing ""total lack of fear in all circumstances""; he brings a few war criminals to bloody justice--with a final, exorcising execution in 1947 South America. Then, after a soul-cleansing sojourn with the Indians of Amazonia, Klimrod arrives penniless in New York--to begin his ""fabulous"" (the adjective is proclaimed ad nauseam) climb to super-fortune. He uses curare-poison threats to break up a protection racket involving newsstand deliveries--and himself organizes the newsdealers into a more profitable outfit. He starts creating company after company, none of them in his own name; he does big deals with Wall St. real estate; he uses old pal David Settiniaz (now a lawyer) and a Harvard international-law professor as his key advisors; he gets into textile plants and oil tankers. So, by 1955, Klimrod is an anonymous billionaire--though his personal life (barely sketched in) is tragic: wife Charmian is a schizophrenic who kills their baby, is frequently institutionalized, and eventually succeeds at suicide. A much bigger tragedy here, however, seems to be the failure of Klimrod's grand, Ludwig-like scheme for creating a virtual private nation in South America: he buys up vast lands in Amazonia, brings in immigrants, treats the Indians well, establishes utopian conditions. . . but can't get the United Nations to recognize it as a sovereign state. And so Klimrod, the beloved ""King,"" disappears from view, disillusioned. Initially intriguing, then steadily less involving in its flat recitation of the two-dimensional Klimrod's ""amazing,"" ""incredible,"" ""fabulous"" acquisitions.

Pub Date: July 1, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Lyle Stuart

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION