Treads familiar territory (his previous memoirs are much of the same), but readers new to his work will enjoy the exciting...
Doundoulakis’ (I Was Trained to Be a Spy, Book II, 2012, etc.) memoir, co-written with Gafni, tells of his time as a young Greek who fled German-occupied Greece and returned later to face the enemy as an American spy.
When German forces drove Allied troops out of Greece, Doundoulakis and his brother, George, became a part of the Cretan resistance. But the two had to escape their home in Crete once the Gestapo learned of George’s association with British intelligence. Due to their time in the resistance and the fact that they were American citizens (born in Ohio), the brothers enlisted in the U.S. Army and joined the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS-trained Doundoulakis made his way back to Greece as a radio operator, where sending a covert transmission to Cairo headquarters could, if intercepted by the Germans, easily lead to capture and torture. The author’s memoir perfectly encapsulates the mixed feelings of his younger self; he was only 20 when sent to the city of Salonica, an event that was both exhilarating and terrifying. His flight from Greece, where he and others hid in caves, is an intense episode, as is his secret passage back into the country. But Doundoulakis’ espionage in Salonica—a substantial part of the story—is the most nerve-wracking section, because Doundoulakis, trained to avoid as much contact with German soldiers as possible, was perpetually wary and alert. He set up his radio antenna concealed in a factory (where he sold supplies as a front), while four German officers played bridge next door; just one of them looking up would have meant almost certain doom. Doundoulakis smartly centers his novel on his personal escapades and doesn’t pad down the narrative with unnecessary coverage of the ongoing World War II. There are constant reminders of the unrelenting danger: Parachute training, for instance, was euphoric for Doundoulakis, but less so when his chute didn’t open during one of the jumps. His OSS instructor summed it up best when he said that the spy life “is the kind of experience that you will brag about to your family and friends, if you survive.”
Treads familiar territory (his previous memoirs are much of the same), but readers new to his work will enjoy the exciting life he’s chosen to share.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499059823
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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