SHARKS AND LITTLE FISH

by Wolfgang Ott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 1957

This translation from the German parallels, in the Navy, what Gunner Asch experienced in the Army, with the arrogant stupidity of the brass and the ferment of insurrection within the ranks. But where Asch campaigned cleverly against the oppression of the men, Teichmann, who goes from a herring fleet at 16 into the Navy, grows up into his gestures of defiance, and, in his endless exposures to the officers' inhumanity to their men and the horrors of war at sea, becomes more intense in his attitude, more resolved in his hatreds. He goes from minesweepers to subs, from brothels and mammoth drunks to blood and endless slaughter aboard ship, from the sometimes comic to the often harrowing episodes that fill in his short life. Teichmann and his comrades exist grimly through the deactivation of mines, the attacks on Allied convoys, the engagements with destroyers, planes and the growing might of their enemy. Their language is as explicit as the details of their daily life, their end as inevitable as their submission. If this leaves nothing to the imagination, its picture of naval war is glaring and memorable, and in its harsh and shocking way it is a war novel to rank, not with, but near The Cruel Sea and The Caine Mutiny.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 1957

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1957

Categories: FICTION