THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH

by Robert Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 1966

Robert Shaw (The Hiding Place--his first and best) conducts another post-Auschwitz investigation of guilt and survival sickness which makes its point very clearly even though it is pursued through the vagaries of an old man's confused mind. Goldman, the old man, is first introduced in America, a rich entrepreneuer in real estate attended by a butler, a chauffeur, a doctor; inconsecutively, rather incoherently, he talks about football or a thirty-two million dollar deal or pays respects to his wife in her tomb or indulges in private jokes; he proceeds through various health rituals, rewrites his will, entertains splendidly, and throughout claims that he is being followed by one Dorff, a Colonel in the mobile killing units of Hitler's SS. In the second part, Dorff comes up for trial, subsequent to Eichmann's, in a glass booth in Israel and Goldman, as Dorff, says ""what no German has ever said in the dock"" in an indictment which transcends national boundaries, racial issues, time--centuries.....The novel which relies on every kind of playful turnabout (figments of the imagination; figures of speech; switches of scene and identity) still is basically a polemic as much as an exercise in irony. Still one wonders if it will get the message across to the general reader.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1966

Categories: FICTION