I've made good progress with my to-read list for the War Through the Generations challenge this week. I've read two books on my list of five and thought to review them both today. The books I read are Crabwalk by Günter Grass and Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Let's start with Crabwalk:Basic Facts:
Author: Günter Grass
Book: Crabwalk
Translated from the German by: Krishna Winston
First published in German: 2002
First published in Great Britain: 2003
I read the Faber and Faber paperback version published in 2004
Günter Grass is one ot the most important contemporary writers in Germany. He has written numerous novels, poems, plays, and essays. He is also a graphic artist. His work has been translated to many languages, but this was the first novel by him I read either in Finnish or English. My German is not good enough to try to read Grass in the original language...
Crabwalk tells the story of the most devastating maritime disaster of all time, and no, it is not the sinking of the Titanic. The deadliest maritime disaster in history was the sinking by a Soviet submarine of the German ship the Wilhelm Gustloff in January 30th, 1945. Over 9500 persons died, many of them children.
Grass tells the story through three generations of a family. The mother of the narrator is one of the survivors of the sinking. As a young pregnant woman she gave birth on the ship that rescued her the same day that the Wilhelm Gustloff sank. She has never really got over what happened that night. The narrator's life has always been marked by the evens surrounding his birth. He is a journalist and starts to research the sinking thinking first that he could keep the work from becoming personal, but later, it all becomes all too personal for him. The third generation is portrayed by the narrator's teenage son, who, we find out as the story progresses, sympatises with the far-right. The story begins with who was Wilhelm Gustloff and what happened to him and progresses forwards, backwards and sidewards from the past to present and back again, from the man Gustloff and the man sho shot him to the narrato'rs pregnant mother to his son to the U-boat commander Marinesko, who ordered the Wilhelm Gustloff to be torpedoed. Thus the name Crabwalk.
Grass has written an important book, and written it well. Of course you would not expect less from a Nobel Prize in literature winner! He won the price in 1999. In the Faber and Faber paperback edition of Crabwalk the year is given wrongly as 2000. I love how in the Nobel Prize web site he is portrayed as someone 'whose frolicsome black fabels portray the forgotten face of history'. There is certainly lots of that in Crabwalk.
As an interesting sidenote: just today I went to a store to look if they had any interesting DVDs, I would like to buy, and there on the shelf were copies of Gustloff, a made to TV film, made last year! And before first reading about Grass's book a short while ago I had no knowledge of the whole sinking of the ship! (And no, I did not buy that DVD, at least not this time :))
The other book I read for the challenge was, as I already mentioned, Sarah's Key. Let's start again with some basic facts:
Book: Sarah's Key
Author: Tatiana de Rosnay
First published: 2007.
I read: The John Murray paperback version, printed in 2008.
Sarah's Key is a story of a young Jewish girl, who with her parents is arrested during the Vélodrome d'Hiver round-up in 16 July 1942 by the French police. To save her little brother the ten year old Sarah locks him into a cupboard before the police takes her and the parents away. Sarah's Key is also the story of Julia Jarmond, an American-born journalist married to a Frenchman and living in Paris, who is assigned to write a piece about the Vél d'Hiv' round-up as the 60th commemoration of the events is approaching. The job leads Julia into a path of discovery, as it soon becomes clear that her husband's family is closely connected to the events of the Vél d'Hiv' and the story of Sarah.
The narrative moves first between chapters narrated from the point of view of Sarah and those narrated by Julia. Later it is only Julia who tells the story. Melanie commented on my Library Loot post that she liked the history parts of the book better than the contemporary ones. In my case it was actually the opposite. Maybe it was because I have read quite a lot about WW II and it was largely rather obvious what would happen to Sarah. Somehow Julia's side of the story, finding with her what had happened to Sarah, what connected her in-laws to the faith of the little Jewish girl, and also Julia's modern day sorrows, were more interesting to me. Also, in my opinion, sometimes Sarah's words and thoughts were clearly too adult for a 10-year old, even if the 10-year old had gone through such horrible events as Sarah had to endure.
All in all, both Crabwalk and Sarah's Key were good reads. However, personally I found neither book really captivating, not even Crabwalk. Even though it is a very well written work of fiction, because of the subject matter, it is not a book I would probably have read, had it not been for the challenge. I'm glad I read it, though!
If you want to read more about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, there is a rather comprehensive website dedicated to the history of the ship. Here is a link.
Here is a link to a nice interview of Tatiana de Rosnay on YouTube.
Finally, if you would like to read a really great book about World War II from a child's point of view, I would recommend Book Thief by Markus Zuzak.
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