An unsettling but page-turning novel about 20th-century evil.
A German classic about the Nazis' escalating campaign against the Jewish people, in a translation newly revised by Joshua Cohen.
Written in 1933, the year Hitler was appointed German chancellor, the Bavarian Jewish Feuchtwanger's five-alarm warning of a novel focuses on the well-off Oppermann family, of which three brothers run a family chain of furniture stores in Berlin. With their history of achievement and as proud Germans, the siblings think they're safe from the oppressive actions they're hearing about. The first inkling that they are at risk comes via the persecution of 17-year-old Berthold Oppermann, a good student and self-possessed soul, by a Nationalism-embracing teacher who loves hearing his students sing "When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, / Then all goes well again." Soon enough, the weight of state-mandated hatred falls on the Oppermanns in spite of their painful decision to change the name of their business to a non-Jewish–sounding name, as other Jewish firms had done. But as the scourge of discrimination against Jewish businessmen, doctors, and others intensifies, leading to suicides and purges ("Who was shameless enough to allow himself to be operated on by a Jew today?" it is asked), the notion among self-deluding Jews that "the disease that ails this country, man, is acute, not chronic" dims. The novel never raises its voice. Its power builds from its methodical telling of day-to-day reality, how the characters respond to increasingly frightening events, and what their future, if there is one, holds. News of concentration camps—the horrors of which even Feuchtwanger, writing as a French exile, couldn't imagine—is heard from a distance. Readers will be struck by how little the language about White supremacy, antisemitism, the swapping of lies for facts, the discrediting of the press, and the embrace of violence over reason have changed. It's hard to imagine a 90-year-old book being more timely.
An unsettling but page-turning novel about 20th-century evil.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-946022-33-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: McNally Editions
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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