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After Dachau by Quinn, Daniel (2006) Paperback
Daniel Quinn, well known for Ishmael — a life-changing book for readers the world over — takes on another world myth in this suspenseful novel. He once again turns the tables and creates a future world that is so much like our own, yet terrifying beyond words. Compared by readers and critics alike to 1984 and Brave New World, After Dachau is a new dystopian classic.
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First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Daniel Quinn
52 books1,885 followersI had and did the usual things -- childhood, schools, universities (St. Louis, Vienna, Loyola of Chicago), then embarked on a career in publishing in Chicago. Within a few years I was the head of the Biography & Fine Arts Department of the American Peoples Encyclopedia; when that was subsumed by a larger outfit and moved to New York, I stayed behind and moved into educational publishing, beginning at Science Research Associates (a division of IBM) and ending as Editorial Director of The Society for Vision Education (a division of the Singer Corporation).
In 1977 I walked away from SVE and this very successful career when it became clear that I was not going to able to do there what I really wanted to do...which was not entirely clear. A few months later I set my feet on a path that would change my life completely. It was a path made up of books -- or rather versions of a book that, after twelve years, would turn out to be ISHMAEL.
The first version, written in 1977-78, called MAN AND ALIEN, didn't turn out to be quite what I wanted, so wrote a second, called THE GENESIS TRANSCRIPT. Like the first version, this didn't satisfy me, so I wrote a third with the same title. THE BOOK OF NAHASH, abandoned unfinished, was the fourth version.
When I started writing version five, THE BOOK OF THE DAMNED in 1981, I was sure I'd found the book I was born to write. The versions that came before had been like rainy days with moments of sunshine. THIS was a thunderstorm, and the lines crossed my pages like flashes of lightning. When, after a few thousand words I came to a clear climax, I said, "This MUST be seen," so I put Part One into print. Parts Two and Three followed, and I began searching for the switch that would turn on Part Four... but it just wasn't there. What I'd done was terrific -- and complete in its own way -- but at last I faced the fact that the whole thing just couldn't be done in lightning strikes.
And so, on to versions six and seven (both called ANOTHER STORY TO BE IN). I knew I was close, and version eight was it -- the first and only version to be a novel and the first and only version inhabited by a telepathic gorilla named Ishmael.
ISHMAEL was a life-changing book. It began by winning the Turner Tomorrow Award, the largest prize ever given to a single literary work. It would come to be read in some 25 languages and used in classrooms from mid-school to graduate school in courses as varied as history philosophy, geography, archaeology, religion, biology, zoology, ecology, anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology.
But in 1992, when ISHMAEL was published, I had no idea what I might do next. My readers decided this for me. In letters that arrived by the bushel they demanded to know where this strange book came from, what "made" me write it. To answer these questions I wrote PROVIDENCE: THE STORY OF A FIFTY-YEAR VISION QUEST (1995).
But there were even more urgently important questions to be answered, particularly this one: "With ISHMAEL you've undermined the religious beliefs of a lifetime. What am I supposed to replace them with?" I replied to this with THE STORY OF B (1996).
The questions (and books) kept coming: Why did Ishmael have to die? This gave rise to MY ISHMAEL: A SEQUEL (1997), in which it's revealed that Ishmael was not only far from being dead but far from being finished with his work as a teacher. The question "Where do we go from here?" was the inspiration for BEYOND CIVILIZATION: HUMANITY'S NEXT GREAT ADVENTURE (1999), a very different kind of book.
With these questions answered (and 500 more on my website), I felt I was fundamentally finished with what might be called my teachings and ready to move on.
I had always taken as my guiding principle these words from André Gide: "What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it, written as well as you, do not write it.
In 1977 I walked away from SVE and this very successful career when it became clear that I was not going to able to do there what I really wanted to do...which was not entirely clear. A few months later I set my feet on a path that would change my life completely. It was a path made up of books -- or rather versions of a book that, after twelve years, would turn out to be ISHMAEL.
The first version, written in 1977-78, called MAN AND ALIEN, didn't turn out to be quite what I wanted, so wrote a second, called THE GENESIS TRANSCRIPT. Like the first version, this didn't satisfy me, so I wrote a third with the same title. THE BOOK OF NAHASH, abandoned unfinished, was the fourth version.
When I started writing version five, THE BOOK OF THE DAMNED in 1981, I was sure I'd found the book I was born to write. The versions that came before had been like rainy days with moments of sunshine. THIS was a thunderstorm, and the lines crossed my pages like flashes of lightning. When, after a few thousand words I came to a clear climax, I said, "This MUST be seen," so I put Part One into print. Parts Two and Three followed, and I began searching for the switch that would turn on Part Four... but it just wasn't there. What I'd done was terrific -- and complete in its own way -- but at last I faced the fact that the whole thing just couldn't be done in lightning strikes.
And so, on to versions six and seven (both called ANOTHER STORY TO BE IN). I knew I was close, and version eight was it -- the first and only version to be a novel and the first and only version inhabited by a telepathic gorilla named Ishmael.
ISHMAEL was a life-changing book. It began by winning the Turner Tomorrow Award, the largest prize ever given to a single literary work. It would come to be read in some 25 languages and used in classrooms from mid-school to graduate school in courses as varied as history philosophy, geography, archaeology, religion, biology, zoology, ecology, anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology.
But in 1992, when ISHMAEL was published, I had no idea what I might do next. My readers decided this for me. In letters that arrived by the bushel they demanded to know where this strange book came from, what "made" me write it. To answer these questions I wrote PROVIDENCE: THE STORY OF A FIFTY-YEAR VISION QUEST (1995).
But there were even more urgently important questions to be answered, particularly this one: "With ISHMAEL you've undermined the religious beliefs of a lifetime. What am I supposed to replace them with?" I replied to this with THE STORY OF B (1996).
The questions (and books) kept coming: Why did Ishmael have to die? This gave rise to MY ISHMAEL: A SEQUEL (1997), in which it's revealed that Ishmael was not only far from being dead but far from being finished with his work as a teacher. The question "Where do we go from here?" was the inspiration for BEYOND CIVILIZATION: HUMANITY'S NEXT GREAT ADVENTURE (1999), a very different kind of book.
With these questions answered (and 500 more on my website), I felt I was fundamentally finished with what might be called my teachings and ready to move on.
I had always taken as my guiding principle these words from André Gide: "What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it, written as well as you, do not write it.
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September 12, 2012
This alternative-history raises the question: What if everything you've been taught about history were wrong? (Actually, I fear that young adults today are indeed being sent forth with an unsupportable world-view, but that's a separate rant.) In Quinn's novel, the characters' understanding is so different from our own that the reader's eventual discovery of it is one of the biggest surprises in reading that I can recall. For me, it was jaw-dropping.
UPDATE: I’ve now read it again, four years after the first pass, and picked up on a lot of issues in the latter part of the story that might’ve passed me by the first time as I was reeling in shock. In its final pages, this turns into a somewhat didactic novel in which we follow the protagonist as he’s more or less forced to learn a lesson about himself and his relationship with the world (in a way slightly reminiscent of what happens in The Magus). It’s a lesson worth considering by anyone aspiring to have an effect on others, be it via indignation over some injustice (e.g., Facebook friends who get into a dither over one abomination or another) or a new creation to sell (my own book being a case in point). Basically, the default position by society is that nobody cares. Making others care, even if it’s only to the point of having them hurl a brick through your window, then becomes an accomplishment.
UPDATE: I’ve now read it again, four years after the first pass, and picked up on a lot of issues in the latter part of the story that might’ve passed me by the first time as I was reeling in shock. In its final pages, this turns into a somewhat didactic novel in which we follow the protagonist as he’s more or less forced to learn a lesson about himself and his relationship with the world (in a way slightly reminiscent of what happens in The Magus). It’s a lesson worth considering by anyone aspiring to have an effect on others, be it via indignation over some injustice (e.g., Facebook friends who get into a dither over one abomination or another) or a new creation to sell (my own book being a case in point). Basically, the default position by society is that nobody cares. Making others care, even if it’s only to the point of having them hurl a brick through your window, then becomes an accomplishment.
May 11, 2012
Seeing the word "Dachau" automatically puts into mind certain very specific impressions. I think of World War II, I think of the extermination of the Jews, I think of death and humankind at its worst. When I was lent the book by Daniel Quinn, After Dachau, I was very reluctant to reading it. I immediately told my friend that I really don't read books like these. These kinds of books really hit me hard. Every time I read or watch a movie/story about anything the Jewish people had to go through during the Holocaust, I can not help but tear up. And I do anything to prevent me from tearing up. I even avoid the Holocaust museums. I've only been twice. Once by choice. So, I declined with the explanation that I just don't like books like these. He told me to trust him. So I did and took the book and promptly put in on my book shelf among the stacks of books that I will get to eventually.
In the meantime I was reading another book by the same author, Ishmael. I loved that book! There, the author presented to us through a first person narration the meaning of life, told and taught by a talking gorilla. Inbetween, I've read a couple other fun books and these books were fun enough that I felt that I was prepared to read After Dachau.
It was with great reluctance and heavy heart that I finally picked up that book.
I couldn't put it down.
This is one of those books that have those Chuck Palanuik "aha! Oh My God!" moments so I can't say too much about the book. Only that it is not what I expected at all. World War II was barely mentioned as well as Jews, Concentration Camps, even Dachau itself. It was really about something much much different. And the revelations! Wow. Daniel Quinn is a magician. He beautifully uses misdirection and then all of the sudden, viola! You get the ground knocked out from under you. Suddenly, you don't know where/when/who or anything else that this book had you believing from the beginning. And the first revelation occurs half way into the book...and it's a short book. Only a little over 200 pages. So, a hundred pages into the book you suddenly realize that this story is NOT the story that you thought you were reading. And it only gets better.
There is a quote that this book attributes to Napoleon, "History is an agreed upon fiction." This book grabs that quote (don't worry, I didn't give anything away; the quote is on the back cover) and puts it in a perspective that puts everything into doubt. Everything. Just like the previous book by him that I read, Ismael.
I no longer can look at the world the same way.
And, yes, during the last page of the book, I teared up.
In the meantime I was reading another book by the same author, Ishmael. I loved that book! There, the author presented to us through a first person narration the meaning of life, told and taught by a talking gorilla. Inbetween, I've read a couple other fun books and these books were fun enough that I felt that I was prepared to read After Dachau.
It was with great reluctance and heavy heart that I finally picked up that book.
I couldn't put it down.
This is one of those books that have those Chuck Palanuik "aha! Oh My God!" moments so I can't say too much about the book. Only that it is not what I expected at all. World War II was barely mentioned as well as Jews, Concentration Camps, even Dachau itself. It was really about something much much different. And the revelations! Wow. Daniel Quinn is a magician. He beautifully uses misdirection and then all of the sudden, viola! You get the ground knocked out from under you. Suddenly, you don't know where/when/who or anything else that this book had you believing from the beginning. And the first revelation occurs half way into the book...and it's a short book. Only a little over 200 pages. So, a hundred pages into the book you suddenly realize that this story is NOT the story that you thought you were reading. And it only gets better.
There is a quote that this book attributes to Napoleon, "History is an agreed upon fiction." This book grabs that quote (don't worry, I didn't give anything away; the quote is on the back cover) and puts it in a perspective that puts everything into doubt. Everything. Just like the previous book by him that I read, Ismael.
I no longer can look at the world the same way.
And, yes, during the last page of the book, I teared up.
July 25, 2023
I picked this book up at a thrift store recently not really having any idea what the book would be about. At first, the book was basically the story of a young man, Jason Tull, from a rich family who becomes obsessed with reincarnation and trying to find a "golden case" that cannot easily be dismissed by skeptics. The book describes a couple of pretty solid cases of reincarnation and then Jason finds Mallory Hastings, who upon waking up in a hospital after a car accident, becomes hostile and terrified and is unaccountably mute. Jason sends her a message telling her that "1) You're not Mallory Hastings at all; 2) You don't know how you got where you are; and 3) You're afraid to speak the truth to the people around you." Mallory grabs onto this and decides to trust Jason but can Jason find out her true identity prior to being reincarnated?
Okay, all of this was rather fascinating and the novel was really drawing me in. Then all of sudden, Quinn pulls the rug out and the novel takes a very unexpected turn! The reality is that Jason is living 2000 years in the future and Mallory had lived her previous life way back in the mid twentieth century before what was know as the battle of Dachau when time was reset to "After Dachau" or AD time. In this future world the "mongrel races" have been eliminated and Hitler was perceived as a legend who led the Aryans to victory. There is a quote from Napoleon in the book that "history is an agreed-upon fiction." This book uses the quote as a way to say that everything one knows is in doubt.
This was a really thought-provoking and jaw-dropping narrative that I won't soon forget. A really high recommendation for this one. Now I also want to read Quinn's other works including his most famous, Ishmael.
Okay, all of this was rather fascinating and the novel was really drawing me in. Then all of sudden, Quinn pulls the rug out and the novel takes a very unexpected turn! The reality is that Jason is living 2000 years in the future and Mallory had lived her previous life way back in the mid twentieth century before what was know as the battle of Dachau when time was reset to "After Dachau" or AD time. In this future world the "mongrel races" have been eliminated and Hitler was perceived as a legend who led the Aryans to victory. There is a quote from Napoleon in the book that "history is an agreed-upon fiction." This book uses the quote as a way to say that everything one knows is in doubt.
This was a really thought-provoking and jaw-dropping narrative that I won't soon forget. A really high recommendation for this one. Now I also want to read Quinn's other works including his most famous, Ishmael.
September 16, 2012
Two thirds of this dystopic novel are outstanding. Without spoiling anything, you clearly know something is up the deeper you get into it, but you don't fully put it together. It is sort of like a "Twilight Zone" episode where you know a twist is probably coming, and, similarly, it is more enjoyable to just let it happen. I would recommend reading no synopses or reviews, and just go in with the knowledge that this book basically deals with reincarnation.
The first third of the story is, for my tastes, downright creepy. Children as potential reincarnates are detailed, and that sets the tone going into Act II.
Act II is the meat of the tale, and becomes a bit more of a detective story mixed in with what might be a case of reincarnation, but still very captivating to the point where you are eager to see where it will lead.
The third act, though, is extremely disappointing, in my opinion. The story degenerates into some sort of morality tale and goes so far as to ignore main characters and major events in the first two acts, until the Epilogue, essentially. It doesn't feel necessary, nor do I think its point is necessarily even well-made. The story was rolling along and would have made the same point, regardless.
The disdain I felt over the last act actually stopped me from giving this book 4 stars, which is unfortunate. This book could also be very offensive to many people, but I do not discount it for doing so; it is just a tale of fiction and if it evokes emotion, good or bad, it is doing its job.
This review is suitably vague, but that is intentional, as I think the story is still a mostly enjoyable read, but probably more so if very little is known about it, in lieu of areas of disappointment.
The first third of the story is, for my tastes, downright creepy. Children as potential reincarnates are detailed, and that sets the tone going into Act II.
Act II is the meat of the tale, and becomes a bit more of a detective story mixed in with what might be a case of reincarnation, but still very captivating to the point where you are eager to see where it will lead.
The third act, though, is extremely disappointing, in my opinion. The story degenerates into some sort of morality tale and goes so far as to ignore main characters and major events in the first two acts, until the Epilogue, essentially. It doesn't feel necessary, nor do I think its point is necessarily even well-made. The story was rolling along and would have made the same point, regardless.
The disdain I felt over the last act actually stopped me from giving this book 4 stars, which is unfortunate. This book could also be very offensive to many people, but I do not discount it for doing so; it is just a tale of fiction and if it evokes emotion, good or bad, it is doing its job.
This review is suitably vague, but that is intentional, as I think the story is still a mostly enjoyable read, but probably more so if very little is known about it, in lieu of areas of disappointment.
April 20, 2016
This is a quick and often clever amusement. I really liked it on that level. But it is not something that should be taken seriously. The book is billed as "Orwellian," but it doesn't come close. It lacks the mechanisms of control, the urgency, and the sense of inescapability that made 1984 so good. If this book says anything, it is that if we're patient, sooner or later things will get fixed. Not "Orwellian."
And yet, I still came away with the impression that, like many dystopian novels, this was supposed to be a cautionary tale. There are two problems with this: (1) the plot relies on a fictitious history - one that never was and could never possibly be - thus giving us nothing to fear nor anything about which to feel guilty; and (2) the book relies on excruciatingly simplistic views of human nature and the social sciences, in which scholarship, resistance, and morality somehow ceased to exist in the 1940s. For the latter reason, even if the story was not meant to make us take responsibility for things we actually did, it does not even succeed metaphorically, failing to make us take responsibility for atrocities we are capable of committing.
Aside from that, the ending is marred by two instances of poor editing/fact-checking.
And yet, I still came away with the impression that, like many dystopian novels, this was supposed to be a cautionary tale. There are two problems with this: (1) the plot relies on a fictitious history - one that never was and could never possibly be - thus giving us nothing to fear nor anything about which to feel guilty; and (2) the book relies on excruciatingly simplistic views of human nature and the social sciences, in which scholarship, resistance, and morality somehow ceased to exist in the 1940s. For the latter reason, even if the story was not meant to make us take responsibility for things we actually did, it does not even succeed metaphorically, failing to make us take responsibility for atrocities we are capable of committing.
Aside from that, the ending is marred by two instances of poor editing/fact-checking.
February 20, 2020
Bir distopya hayranı olarak daha önce nasıl bu kitaptan haberim olmadı, bilemiyorum. Çok güzel, vurucu...
January 27, 2021
Jason Tull Jr. tiene la vida resuelta y por eso puede darse el lujo de hacer juicios públicos sobre la reencarnación, el flujo de la historia e inclusive, el arte.
Al comienzo, las intenciones de él y las de Mallory tiene un rumbo, pero al final ambos terminan queriendo hilar tantos fragmentos aislados que desencadenan escenas insufriblemente lentas y saltos de escenarios muy poco probables.
El cierre del libro también se siente totalmente innecesario y si la finalidad del autor era crear conciencia social, seguramente necesitará un poco más de coherencia para que eso suceda.
Al comienzo, las intenciones de él y las de Mallory tiene un rumbo, pero al final ambos terminan queriendo hilar tantos fragmentos aislados que desencadenan escenas insufriblemente lentas y saltos de escenarios muy poco probables.
El cierre del libro también se siente totalmente innecesario y si la finalidad del autor era crear conciencia social, seguramente necesitará un poco más de coherencia para que eso suceda.
February 27, 2017
I really had no clue what to expect when I picked this up, but wow, mind blown. This is a book that keeps you on the edge the whole way through.
October 3, 2017
'Tarih üzerinde uzlaşılan bir masaldır'
Takıntılı olmayan biri nasıl bir senfoni besteler yada bin sayfalık bir roman yazardı ki? Takıntılı olmayan hangi insan haritada bile yeri olmayan okyanusu yirmi iki metrelık yelkeniyle geçerdi? Takıntılı olmayan insanların kalitesiz yaşam sürdüğüne inanıyor gibiyim.
Takıntılı olmayan biri nasıl bir senfoni besteler yada bin sayfalık bir roman yazardı ki? Takıntılı olmayan hangi insan haritada bile yeri olmayan okyanusu yirmi iki metrelık yelkeniyle geçerdi? Takıntılı olmayan insanların kalitesiz yaşam sürdüğüne inanıyor gibiyim.
June 25, 2014
What if Hitler was right? It's a shock value statement, obviously, but it’s worth considering when going into this book. In this alternate history, Hitler won. The concentration camps weren’t concentration camps at all—they were glorious battles against the horrendous, uncivilized and unevolved lower races, who sought to bring down the superior Aryans by subtly poisoning their culture and diluting the Aryan gene-pool with interbreeding. Why, had we lost the battle of Dachau, who knows what might have happened!? Certainly we’d all become mongrels.
Although, other than the countless obvious parallels, not least of which was the slaughter of Native Americans by European settlers, one has to wonder what the world would be like with one race. And this was achieved through a glorious battle two thousand years ago in which our ancestors fended off the lower races and drove them to extinction.
Certainly there’d be no racism. Certainly there’d be no more than one religion. Certainly there’d be fewer skirmishes, if any, since we’re all united. Would there be anything to fight over? Would there be any more war?
If you lived in such a world, you’d be excused for thinking things were all right. Sure, those who really asked the tough questions might get an uneasy feeling about how the world came to be. Those people might throw up at the realization of the web of lies on which they live, but, hey, what can you do about it now? What’s done is done.
The books ends when the main character is forced into a room and held captive until he acknowledges, 1984-style, three words that will sent him free. He doesn’t know them, but is instead forced to guess. As he and his captor talk and debate about what he views as an atrocity, his captor’s total lack of empathy leads to a revelation and the words come to him: NO ONE CARES.
Ain’t that the truth?
Of course, I think Quinn’s “not caring” is more about apathy. Because in such a world (wait, is this fiction?) we may say, “yeah, it’s sad, but what can we really do about it now?”
Luckily I’ve read Daniel Quinn before so know ahead of time that you don’t read his books for the characters or plot. The bad reviews surrounding this all miss the point of Quinn’s writing, which is understandable, because quite honestly it’s an awful narrative. The dialog is atrocious and the characters are flat. But they barely matter. They're not the point.
Although, other than the countless obvious parallels, not least of which was the slaughter of Native Americans by European settlers, one has to wonder what the world would be like with one race. And this was achieved through a glorious battle two thousand years ago in which our ancestors fended off the lower races and drove them to extinction.
Certainly there’d be no racism. Certainly there’d be no more than one religion. Certainly there’d be fewer skirmishes, if any, since we’re all united. Would there be anything to fight over? Would there be any more war?
If you lived in such a world, you’d be excused for thinking things were all right. Sure, those who really asked the tough questions might get an uneasy feeling about how the world came to be. Those people might throw up at the realization of the web of lies on which they live, but, hey, what can you do about it now? What’s done is done.
The books ends when the main character is forced into a room and held captive until he acknowledges, 1984-style, three words that will sent him free. He doesn’t know them, but is instead forced to guess. As he and his captor talk and debate about what he views as an atrocity, his captor’s total lack of empathy leads to a revelation and the words come to him: NO ONE CARES.
Ain’t that the truth?
Of course, I think Quinn’s “not caring” is more about apathy. Because in such a world (wait, is this fiction?) we may say, “yeah, it’s sad, but what can we really do about it now?”
Luckily I’ve read Daniel Quinn before so know ahead of time that you don’t read his books for the characters or plot. The bad reviews surrounding this all miss the point of Quinn’s writing, which is understandable, because quite honestly it’s an awful narrative. The dialog is atrocious and the characters are flat. But they barely matter. They're not the point.
June 21, 2016
I read this when it first came out. It was interesting to read it again, over a decade later. Daniel Quinn was my favorite writer. He has a penchant for exposing the fictions our society was built on. History is always told by the victors, and always portrays them in a favorable light. This book is about exactly that tendency. There are some fascinating, unexpected plot twists in it, but some of them feel a little forced and unrealistic. But if you've read his first book ( Ishmael), you know he's less interested in realistic stories (telepathic gorilla, anyone?) and more interested in making a point.
June 24, 2009
Probably my least favorite Quinn novel but still an interesting read. Like The Holy, Quinn's philosophy on food production and a degenerating culture are only a backdrop to the main story. Not much to say other than I like the premise of portraying the world far in the future, and seeing what life would be like if Hitler won World War II. Nobody really thinks about that but that's the wonder of Daniel Quinn; he writes about what one would hardly ever think of.
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December 18, 20232023 reads, #102. DID NOT FINISH. I'm going through a little mini-reading project right now, making my way through as many alternative-history novels I can get my hands on that share the "what if" concept of the Nazis actually winning World War Two. I have to admit, though, that my main interest in this subject is in finding action-adventure thrillers set in this world, very similar to Robert Harris' Fatherland (a murder mystery set in a mid-1960s Berlin full of skinny-tie-wearing Nazis), and that Daniel Quinn's After Dachau is most certainly not this kind of alt-history novel, but rather a slow and boring academic character drama that uses this alt-history setting merely as a gimmick to instead share the pedantic and platitude-filled message of "WHITE PEOPLE BAD!!!!," a particularly popular type of academic novel in the late 1990s when this was first written.
Ostensibly it's the story of an employee at a nonprofit in the early 2000s devoted to tracking down as many verified cases as possible of true reincarnation, a career that has so far been almost entirely filled with liars, cranks and con artists, and the story itself hinges around a person he meets who seems to have really gone through a reincarnation, supposedly as first a black woman in the 1940s. It's only then, though, that we discover the big gimmick behind this story -- that it's actually set in the year 4000 AD by our own calendar, that the world reset the calendar back to 0 after the Nazis conquered the planet in 1945 (after the decisive Battle of Dachau that gives this book its name), and that in the two thousand years since, the planet of white people who eventually became the global Nazi Party has managed to successfully kill every non-white person who ever existed, so thoroughly and so long ago that people in 4000 AD now generally believe that people of color never actually existed, and instead were fanciful inventions of fantasy authors like elves, dwarves and trolls are.
That's an interesting concept, I admit; but like so many badly written alt-history novels, Quinn's book here is all concept and no plot, with the storyline being basically a 300-page investigation to eventually learn the premise I just mentioned above, then with the story suddenly ending once he learns this information. Instead, the whole thing seems to just be an exercise in reminding people that white people are shit, that they will kill every person of color on the planet if ever given the opportunity to do so, and...uh, the end. That will have its fans, I'm sure (looking up his Wikipedia page now, I can see that Quinn is well known for his radical liberal politics, and I'm sure the usual MFA/NPR crowd ate this book up when it first came out); but as someone who is looking for "Nazis Win The War" alt-history books primarily to read genre thrillers, this snoozer fell flat on its face for me, a book I read the first 50 pages of and then skipped straight to the last chapter when I could see how molasses-slow the story was going to be. Fellow alt-history nerds will want to take all this into serious consideration when deciding whether or not to read the book themselves.
Ostensibly it's the story of an employee at a nonprofit in the early 2000s devoted to tracking down as many verified cases as possible of true reincarnation, a career that has so far been almost entirely filled with liars, cranks and con artists, and the story itself hinges around a person he meets who seems to have really gone through a reincarnation, supposedly as first a black woman in the 1940s. It's only then, though, that we discover the big gimmick behind this story -- that it's actually set in the year 4000 AD by our own calendar, that the world reset the calendar back to 0 after the Nazis conquered the planet in 1945 (after the decisive Battle of Dachau that gives this book its name), and that in the two thousand years since, the planet of white people who eventually became the global Nazi Party has managed to successfully kill every non-white person who ever existed, so thoroughly and so long ago that people in 4000 AD now generally believe that people of color never actually existed, and instead were fanciful inventions of fantasy authors like elves, dwarves and trolls are.
That's an interesting concept, I admit; but like so many badly written alt-history novels, Quinn's book here is all concept and no plot, with the storyline being basically a 300-page investigation to eventually learn the premise I just mentioned above, then with the story suddenly ending once he learns this information. Instead, the whole thing seems to just be an exercise in reminding people that white people are shit, that they will kill every person of color on the planet if ever given the opportunity to do so, and...uh, the end. That will have its fans, I'm sure (looking up his Wikipedia page now, I can see that Quinn is well known for his radical liberal politics, and I'm sure the usual MFA/NPR crowd ate this book up when it first came out); but as someone who is looking for "Nazis Win The War" alt-history books primarily to read genre thrillers, this snoozer fell flat on its face for me, a book I read the first 50 pages of and then skipped straight to the last chapter when I could see how molasses-slow the story was going to be. Fellow alt-history nerds will want to take all this into serious consideration when deciding whether or not to read the book themselves.
October 9, 2024
It's a very interesting deception of the time that we experience. With it comes a completely new form of finding self identity and meaning in our lives.
September 12, 2025
One of the worst booked I have read recently.
The book had a lot of potential but the writer made sure it was all lost.
The book had a lot of potential but the writer made sure it was all lost.
March 13, 2018
I love the premise of this book and it has some interesting ideas but it didn’t go anywhere for me. Where is the conflict? I always think it’s funny that this idea in contemporary literature to tell a “character-driven” story is usually just code for “it’s too hard to come up with a real plot.” If I could give half stars, I’d give it two and a half.
June 12, 2022
Wow total mind fuck. Okay spoiler alert: what would It be like if racism won and hitler had won and all the POCs in the world were murdered and then thousands of years later a black woman exists and doesn’t know what the hell happened since WW2. I’m shocked by the fucked upness of such a utopian society and also how insanely It messed with my head. I would definitely want to read this again. Definitely a doable read and easy to read but not easy to digest and be okay with.
Incredible though for the reason that It made me think a lot.
Incredible though for the reason that It made me think a lot.
December 12, 2011
Interesting concepts featured here--sadly, none of these is ever developed to its full potential. Stilted dialogue--all of Quinn's human characters sound exactly the same, regardless of age, maturity, or education--a handful of inconsistencies (including an error: Mallory's age is alternately indicated as 26 and 28 within only a handful of pages), and loose ends, all contributed to an overall unsatisfying read.
August 6, 2008
the beginning of this book is not very good. by the end quinn has pulled it all together and it finishes fairly strong. the bad part is you feel no connection to the characters, the writing is overly simple and he doesn't fully develop his ideas BUT he still manages to come up with an idea or two i never thought of.
November 2, 2022
After reading Ishmael and My Ishmael, which I loved, I expected great things from this book but found it extremely disappointing. Of all the things the author could have done with this incredibly interesting idea for a story, in my opinion, it was completely lame. I did not care for it at all.
January 6, 2015
It is a thoroughly interesting book that keeps you interested until the little gem at the end. Highly recommend!
June 19, 2021
Reseña completa sin spoilers en https://www.instagram.com/p/COqiz2RlDSD/
June 1, 2024
I picked up After Dachau by Daniel Quinn because I'd just ordered a book from another library and needed something short to read quickly before it arrived. At 230 pages, with a title that caught my interest and an author who's pretty critically appreciated, I figured this book fit the bill. I appreciate this book, and I'm excited to write about it, but there's a pretty major twist halfway through that completely changes everything about it and that I think needs to be experienced in context to fully appreciate. So I'll write about the basic premise some and then shift over to some spoiler thoughts after that.
After Dachau is about a man named Jason, an aimless son of a rich family with government connections, who learns about a phenomenon of people suddenly remembering granular details from the lives of specific people who have passed away. In many of these cases, the subjects remember names, dates, and geographies that no longer exist and that they could never have encountered themselves. In some, their previous identities are subsumed entirely, as the subjects insist they have no memory of their current lives. Jason joins a kooky nonprofit that works to find and document these cases, to prove that reincarnation is real.
When he hears of one such case, Jason drops everything to get there first, before the subject is placed in a situation where she might learn some historical details she could incorporate into a false story. This is how he meets Mallory, a woman who wakes up from a coma using sign language and incapable of understanding speech, as she insists that she has never been able to hear before, to learn what different words sound like. Before the coma, Mallory was a hearing woman with no knowledge of sign language at all. It's a good hook for a novel, and I was pretty disappointed when the novel puts her through speech therapy between scenes and Mallory's previous unfamiliarity with the spoken word stopped mattering. This detail mostly exists to convince the reader that the character is telling the truth, so once the detail has been introduced, Quinn unceremoniously removes it.
My least favorite part of the novel generally is Quinn's writing style. The book isn't allegorical exactly but is definitely trying to evoke the style of socratic dialogues while also having a story and action. This makes much of the narrative feel flat and unnatural - simultaneously not detailed enough to feel concrete but too hung up on small details to be abstract. It's a writing style I associate with books translated from another language, where some words used in the original need several words to appropriately translate, and many sentences have to use an uncommon sentence structure to place their components in the original order. It gives the whole book a strange, stilted quality that takes some adjustment to sink into, but it's unnecessary, as Daniel Quinn was an American writing in English. I probably would've bounced off the book if it wasn't so short, and if I didn't already have the next one en route. As it is, though, I'm glad I read it to the end.
From here on, I'm going to write about the twist and the events after that twist. If you haven't read the book and it sounds interesting to you, maybe hold off until you've read it:
-
-
-
This book is set in 2002, and Gloria - the person who reincarnated into Mallory - was born in 1922. For the most part, from our perspective, the book is set in the present day (the novel was published in 2001). The technology is recognizable, the states and cities are the same, etc. But halfway through, Jason brings Gloria to a high school history classroom to learn the history she missed, and it is revealed that 2002 A.D. stands for After Dachau - the book is set two millennia after WWII and Gloria's death, in a world where the Nazis won the war. The history the high school students recite is one in which the Jews constructed a vast conspiracy from biblical times that culminated in WWI, and then Germany's victory in WWII empowered white nations to engage in a similar purge and then, eventually, to purge all non-aryans. Dachau has been recast from a concentration camp to a battlefield, where the Germans won their last, glorious battle against the Jewish hordes.
The world in which Gloria awoke looks like 2002 but with only white people and with none of the culture brought to us by non-aryans. The music is still classical, the paintings haven't moved beyond impressionism, and the technology hasn't advanced much in two millennia either. The societal narrative for this is that the Jews had been pushing technological advancement as part of their conspiracy, and it's pointed out that this directly contradicts the narrative that their conspiracy also intended to keep Europe in the dark ages. The response is that Aryans find a thing that works and hold onto it, without innovating; stagnation is recast as an inborn superior trait
Gloria reveals herself to be a Black modernist painter who was murdered by the state during their even-more-fascist equivalent of the Red Scare. Now, she's in an Aryan world and an Aryan body, without art movements or radicalisms. She exposes Jason to the underground art and literature of her time and he realizes that there's something here the world is missing. He tries to make people learn the truth and - through convoluted methods - learns the central truth of the novel: "No One Cares."
The final, perfect world of the Nazis, this book posits, isn't one where people still do violence to marginalized social classes. It's one where the violence has been complete for millennia, where no one innovates or creates or expounds, and where no one cares. There's no reason to live, beyond because you are alive. Jason spends much of the book searching for an identity, some idea of who he is and why he is that way, and comes up short throughout until he learns that there once were radicalisms, that the world once was something more, that people once were diverse in their thinking and being. Only through learning that does he differentiate himself enough to find an identity.
We're haunted by the violence enacted by other people long ago. At one point, Jason says he feels no more guilt for the holocaust than Mallory does for the atrocities of Christopher Columbus. But not being directly culpable for an atrocity long past doesn't mean its repercussions don't directly affect your life. There are entire ways of being and thinking and feeling that no longer exist because someone was trying to build the world we live in now. And it's necessary to acknowledge that we're poorer for their actions even if we'll never know the specifics of what we've lost. The only chance we'd ever have of rectifying some sins are through the reincarnation of the long-dead.
After Dachau is about a man named Jason, an aimless son of a rich family with government connections, who learns about a phenomenon of people suddenly remembering granular details from the lives of specific people who have passed away. In many of these cases, the subjects remember names, dates, and geographies that no longer exist and that they could never have encountered themselves. In some, their previous identities are subsumed entirely, as the subjects insist they have no memory of their current lives. Jason joins a kooky nonprofit that works to find and document these cases, to prove that reincarnation is real.
When he hears of one such case, Jason drops everything to get there first, before the subject is placed in a situation where she might learn some historical details she could incorporate into a false story. This is how he meets Mallory, a woman who wakes up from a coma using sign language and incapable of understanding speech, as she insists that she has never been able to hear before, to learn what different words sound like. Before the coma, Mallory was a hearing woman with no knowledge of sign language at all. It's a good hook for a novel, and I was pretty disappointed when the novel puts her through speech therapy between scenes and Mallory's previous unfamiliarity with the spoken word stopped mattering. This detail mostly exists to convince the reader that the character is telling the truth, so once the detail has been introduced, Quinn unceremoniously removes it.
My least favorite part of the novel generally is Quinn's writing style. The book isn't allegorical exactly but is definitely trying to evoke the style of socratic dialogues while also having a story and action. This makes much of the narrative feel flat and unnatural - simultaneously not detailed enough to feel concrete but too hung up on small details to be abstract. It's a writing style I associate with books translated from another language, where some words used in the original need several words to appropriately translate, and many sentences have to use an uncommon sentence structure to place their components in the original order. It gives the whole book a strange, stilted quality that takes some adjustment to sink into, but it's unnecessary, as Daniel Quinn was an American writing in English. I probably would've bounced off the book if it wasn't so short, and if I didn't already have the next one en route. As it is, though, I'm glad I read it to the end.
From here on, I'm going to write about the twist and the events after that twist. If you haven't read the book and it sounds interesting to you, maybe hold off until you've read it:
-
-
-
This book is set in 2002, and Gloria - the person who reincarnated into Mallory - was born in 1922. For the most part, from our perspective, the book is set in the present day (the novel was published in 2001). The technology is recognizable, the states and cities are the same, etc. But halfway through, Jason brings Gloria to a high school history classroom to learn the history she missed, and it is revealed that 2002 A.D. stands for After Dachau - the book is set two millennia after WWII and Gloria's death, in a world where the Nazis won the war. The history the high school students recite is one in which the Jews constructed a vast conspiracy from biblical times that culminated in WWI, and then Germany's victory in WWII empowered white nations to engage in a similar purge and then, eventually, to purge all non-aryans. Dachau has been recast from a concentration camp to a battlefield, where the Germans won their last, glorious battle against the Jewish hordes.
The world in which Gloria awoke looks like 2002 but with only white people and with none of the culture brought to us by non-aryans. The music is still classical, the paintings haven't moved beyond impressionism, and the technology hasn't advanced much in two millennia either. The societal narrative for this is that the Jews had been pushing technological advancement as part of their conspiracy, and it's pointed out that this directly contradicts the narrative that their conspiracy also intended to keep Europe in the dark ages. The response is that Aryans find a thing that works and hold onto it, without innovating; stagnation is recast as an inborn superior trait
Gloria reveals herself to be a Black modernist painter who was murdered by the state during their even-more-fascist equivalent of the Red Scare. Now, she's in an Aryan world and an Aryan body, without art movements or radicalisms. She exposes Jason to the underground art and literature of her time and he realizes that there's something here the world is missing. He tries to make people learn the truth and - through convoluted methods - learns the central truth of the novel: "No One Cares."
The final, perfect world of the Nazis, this book posits, isn't one where people still do violence to marginalized social classes. It's one where the violence has been complete for millennia, where no one innovates or creates or expounds, and where no one cares. There's no reason to live, beyond because you are alive. Jason spends much of the book searching for an identity, some idea of who he is and why he is that way, and comes up short throughout until he learns that there once were radicalisms, that the world once was something more, that people once were diverse in their thinking and being. Only through learning that does he differentiate himself enough to find an identity.
We're haunted by the violence enacted by other people long ago. At one point, Jason says he feels no more guilt for the holocaust than Mallory does for the atrocities of Christopher Columbus. But not being directly culpable for an atrocity long past doesn't mean its repercussions don't directly affect your life. There are entire ways of being and thinking and feeling that no longer exist because someone was trying to build the world we live in now. And it's necessary to acknowledge that we're poorer for their actions even if we'll never know the specifics of what we've lost. The only chance we'd ever have of rectifying some sins are through the reincarnation of the long-dead.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 20, 2015
Imagine if all of the history that you learned as a kid was a lie? Would you even care? Would you try to do anything to set the record straight? Would anyone care if you did?
That's basically the crux of this ingenious little book. It would have gotten 5 stars but for the last part of it, which I will get to in a bit.
The narrator is Jason Tull, Jr., the scion of a rich and famous famous (well, a rich and famous father...I'm thinking like Bill Gates, maybe?) Junior is sort of fumbling around to figure out who he is, without any real ambitions. Because of a book that he read as a kid, Jason is fascinated with the idea of reincarnation. After graduating, he works at a foundation dedicated to finding the "Golden Case": the one that will prove reincarnation once and for all.
He spends a few years tracking down fakes and other problematic cases until he stumbles on Mallory Hastings: a young woman in New England who wakes up after being knocked unconscious by car exhaust (her broke down and she didn't realize it was leaking in), unable to speak. Mallory can Sign, but she cannot speak. This is odd because she was not deaf before the situation that put her in the hospital. She also reacts violently towards everyone she sees, refuses to believe that the woman who comes to her is her mother, and generally acts "not like Mallory".
It turns out that Mallory is not Mallory--she is Gloria Macarthur, a woman who was born in 1922 A.D.(the year is about 2002 A.D. in the book). She uses 1922 era slang (that Jason doesn't know) and is still kinda hostile (can't really blame her). Despite this, the two become close and something dawns on Jason one day. The book isn't clear how he really figures it out, but he gets the idea to take "Mallory" to a prep school to learn about history.
This is the "Bruce Willis was dead the whole time!" moment. We find out that the year is really 2002 A.D.--but that A.D. stands for "After Dachau". The clock was reset in our year 1948 or so, and then it started up again from there. The kids have learned that most of history was a war by the Jews, to take over the Aryan race first by expanding Christianity around (I know it sounds counter-intuitive...you have to read the book to better understand this) and then by encouraging exploration to other lands (and thus finding the "mongrel races" of the Americas, China, Africa, etc.), and finally by mixing the "mongrel races" with Aryans to water down the gene pool.
World War II still happened, but it was viewed as just an extension of the "Great War", which was really the culmination of 1900 years of stealth wars by Jews. Dachau, you see, was really a great battle in which the Germans kicked some real ass, made the rest of the world see how awesome they were, and then suddenly everyone was on board with the blue eyes and blonde hair! The "hero" of Dachau (guess who that was?) wrote that Aryans had to be as "cold as ice" and start getting rid of anyone who was non-Aryan. The kids in this world learned that it just sort of happened...there wasn't really much resistance because it happened so slowly, although they do seem to be aware that some extermination happened.
Needless to say, this shocks the shit out of "Mallory". The next "Bruce Willis was ALIVE?!" moment is when Mallory takes Jason to her former hideout (sort of preserved under Manhattan) and we learn that she was a black woman.
After a bit, she tells Jason that Dachau was actually, you know, a death camp. And that America didn't really feel like it lost anything...more that it didn't win. Germany figured out the atomic bomb a few months before America did, and that was that. Of course, it was super bad in Europe but America just sort of shrugged for a few years.
But then they decided that maybe black people should maybe go back "home" to Africa if they didn't like our little country. Gloria was one of those who stayed in America. (Not surprisingly, the boats that were leaving for Africa didn't seem to be making it there). She and her fiance went (literally) underground in NYC until they were found, and killed themselves rather than be taken alive. Over the past 2000 years, every race except Aryan has been wiped out one way or the other, and we are left with a world full of Whiteys.
Jason trips out, and does two things that lead us into the unfortunate last part of the book: he calls a friend who is a reporter at the NYT and pitches a story and goes to a classical book store to inquire about books from the previous era, especially those by Jews.
These things tip off his wealthy father, who sends in a wealthy friend to drug Jason and put him in a room. And this is the weird part...Jason is basically left there for about a day or so, until he writes NO ONE CARES on a chalkboard. Because we are teaching Jason a lesson...that no one cares. No one cares that history is a lie.
-------
So that leads to the question...would WE care if we found out that the American Revolution happened differently? Or if the fall of Rome or the Middle Ages or the Black Plague or anything was radically different than what we know?
I first read this book about 4 or 5 years ago, and just reread it this past week. Something that I noticed, but hadn't thought about before, was how everything stagnated once we wiped out everyone else. The "new" 2002 didn't have flying cars, jetpacks, or anything that people in Gloria's time thought would exist. It was exactly the same, 2000 years later. Nothing really changed except that now you could go to Africa or China or England or Mexico and find that everyone looks exactly like you do. (That is a terrifying thought, btw).
The very ending of the book finds Jason coming into the possession of some diaries that were written in Dutch. He finds a professor of dead languages, and she translates them for him. We end with him deciding whether or not to publish some diaries by a Jewish teenager named Anne Frank.
Would that change the world, even if he did publish them and they became best sellers? Doubtful. I imagine that the people of 2002 "A.D." would find away to recast the message in a light most favorable to their view of history. Or they'd say they were faked or misinterpreted or whatever.
And us...what if we came into possession of some 2000 year old documents that said that no one name Christ existed and even if he did, he didn't show back up after a few days. Or some papers that said Moses was a known meth head (yeah, sure, they had meth back then!) and rambled on about someone talking to him, so don't take what he says too seriously. What would we do?
That's basically the crux of this ingenious little book. It would have gotten 5 stars but for the last part of it, which I will get to in a bit.
The narrator is Jason Tull, Jr., the scion of a rich and famous famous (well, a rich and famous father...I'm thinking like Bill Gates, maybe?) Junior is sort of fumbling around to figure out who he is, without any real ambitions. Because of a book that he read as a kid, Jason is fascinated with the idea of reincarnation. After graduating, he works at a foundation dedicated to finding the "Golden Case": the one that will prove reincarnation once and for all.
He spends a few years tracking down fakes and other problematic cases until he stumbles on Mallory Hastings: a young woman in New England who wakes up after being knocked unconscious by car exhaust (her broke down and she didn't realize it was leaking in), unable to speak. Mallory can Sign, but she cannot speak. This is odd because she was not deaf before the situation that put her in the hospital. She also reacts violently towards everyone she sees, refuses to believe that the woman who comes to her is her mother, and generally acts "not like Mallory".
It turns out that Mallory is not Mallory--she is Gloria Macarthur, a woman who was born in 1922 A.D.(the year is about 2002 A.D. in the book). She uses 1922 era slang (that Jason doesn't know) and is still kinda hostile (can't really blame her). Despite this, the two become close and something dawns on Jason one day. The book isn't clear how he really figures it out, but he gets the idea to take "Mallory" to a prep school to learn about history.
This is the "Bruce Willis was dead the whole time!" moment. We find out that the year is really 2002 A.D.--but that A.D. stands for "After Dachau". The clock was reset in our year 1948 or so, and then it started up again from there. The kids have learned that most of history was a war by the Jews, to take over the Aryan race first by expanding Christianity around (I know it sounds counter-intuitive...you have to read the book to better understand this) and then by encouraging exploration to other lands (and thus finding the "mongrel races" of the Americas, China, Africa, etc.), and finally by mixing the "mongrel races" with Aryans to water down the gene pool.
World War II still happened, but it was viewed as just an extension of the "Great War", which was really the culmination of 1900 years of stealth wars by Jews. Dachau, you see, was really a great battle in which the Germans kicked some real ass, made the rest of the world see how awesome they were, and then suddenly everyone was on board with the blue eyes and blonde hair! The "hero" of Dachau (guess who that was?) wrote that Aryans had to be as "cold as ice" and start getting rid of anyone who was non-Aryan. The kids in this world learned that it just sort of happened...there wasn't really much resistance because it happened so slowly, although they do seem to be aware that some extermination happened.
Needless to say, this shocks the shit out of "Mallory". The next "Bruce Willis was ALIVE?!" moment is when Mallory takes Jason to her former hideout (sort of preserved under Manhattan) and we learn that she was a black woman.
After a bit, she tells Jason that Dachau was actually, you know, a death camp. And that America didn't really feel like it lost anything...more that it didn't win. Germany figured out the atomic bomb a few months before America did, and that was that. Of course, it was super bad in Europe but America just sort of shrugged for a few years.
But then they decided that maybe black people should maybe go back "home" to Africa if they didn't like our little country. Gloria was one of those who stayed in America. (Not surprisingly, the boats that were leaving for Africa didn't seem to be making it there). She and her fiance went (literally) underground in NYC until they were found, and killed themselves rather than be taken alive. Over the past 2000 years, every race except Aryan has been wiped out one way or the other, and we are left with a world full of Whiteys.
Jason trips out, and does two things that lead us into the unfortunate last part of the book: he calls a friend who is a reporter at the NYT and pitches a story and goes to a classical book store to inquire about books from the previous era, especially those by Jews.
These things tip off his wealthy father, who sends in a wealthy friend to drug Jason and put him in a room. And this is the weird part...Jason is basically left there for about a day or so, until he writes NO ONE CARES on a chalkboard. Because we are teaching Jason a lesson...that no one cares. No one cares that history is a lie.
-------
So that leads to the question...would WE care if we found out that the American Revolution happened differently? Or if the fall of Rome or the Middle Ages or the Black Plague or anything was radically different than what we know?
I first read this book about 4 or 5 years ago, and just reread it this past week. Something that I noticed, but hadn't thought about before, was how everything stagnated once we wiped out everyone else. The "new" 2002 didn't have flying cars, jetpacks, or anything that people in Gloria's time thought would exist. It was exactly the same, 2000 years later. Nothing really changed except that now you could go to Africa or China or England or Mexico and find that everyone looks exactly like you do. (That is a terrifying thought, btw).
The very ending of the book finds Jason coming into the possession of some diaries that were written in Dutch. He finds a professor of dead languages, and she translates them for him. We end with him deciding whether or not to publish some diaries by a Jewish teenager named Anne Frank.
Would that change the world, even if he did publish them and they became best sellers? Doubtful. I imagine that the people of 2002 "A.D." would find away to recast the message in a light most favorable to their view of history. Or they'd say they were faked or misinterpreted or whatever.
And us...what if we came into possession of some 2000 year old documents that said that no one name Christ existed and even if he did, he didn't show back up after a few days. Or some papers that said Moses was a known meth head (yeah, sure, they had meth back then!) and rambled on about someone talking to him, so don't take what he says too seriously. What would we do?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2017
I know there are some of you out there who marvel that I would award 5 whole stars to authors they consider "creative typists" (a critique leveled at Robert Heinlen), that Daniel Quinn is JUST such a schlocky writer, and how do I even operate this iPad while my throat is engorged with a certain portion of his anatomy? Fair, critique of this critic, as of yet I haven't stumbled upon a work he's written that hasn't stunned and changed me. Perhaps I am biased, and you SHOULD dismiss my opinion.
However, while he hasn't impressed all who've encountered his works, the majority of those who've delved into them have walked away a different person than they were before they made it from one cover to another, and so I present my examination of After Dachau. Which, again, certainly changed ME.
I suppose the first thing that impressed me about this work was Quinn's fairly original approach at unwrapping the mystery the narrator discovers. It begins with a man born into money who takes up, among other hobbies, an interest in reincarnation -- ancient souls being reborn into new bodies. The concept fascinates him, and, while his family tolerates his eccentric interests, he knows they regard him as a playboy with an expensive pastime. They humor him to keep him happy and motivated, though they attempt to coax him with pursuits more worthy of his station.
He speaks of a few case studies -- in earnest there are few authentic specimens that convince him he's met someone who genuinely personifies this phenomenon.
And then he meets Mallory (sp?). Forgive me, like his other works it's been some time since I've read After Dachau. The narrator's name escapes me, but it's his encounter with Mallory that (gimmicky as you may accuse the author) leads the narrator into a much new understanding of the world in which he lives. Mallory appears to have possessed the body of a girl who seems utterly, stark-raving mad. She shouts at the narrator accusing him of murder. Even though he's clearly the most mild mannered, harmless guy. However when we learn whom it is that is occupying this body (who possesses ID indicating another name entirely, of course), the reader has two major epiphanies the narrator was too myopic to share with his audience. A. This story takes place two millennia in our future and B. The future they find themselves in is a VERY alternate one, with but one chief distinction. Enter the significance of the book's grim title and "Mallory's" reincarnated identity. We learn, mild-mannered as our narrator seems, he is a part of a macabre history he only just begins to learn by meeting his "specimen".
The adventure of the narrator proving his thesis accurate and Mallory, that she's not crazy, but in fact a very different girl than the one she presents lead to apocryphal, damning knowledge, and then his ultimate denouement with "The Powers That Be". This approach to (what I would describe as) poli sci fi was a truly surprising, disturbing, and not manifesto-esque like his other works, but rather, ACTUAL fiction that still demonstrates a formula which NETWORKS this tale to his other bodies of work. IT, just as THEY, are a greater, overarching editorial about how twists in history affect culture and the human animal as a whole.
However, while he hasn't impressed all who've encountered his works, the majority of those who've delved into them have walked away a different person than they were before they made it from one cover to another, and so I present my examination of After Dachau. Which, again, certainly changed ME.
I suppose the first thing that impressed me about this work was Quinn's fairly original approach at unwrapping the mystery the narrator discovers. It begins with a man born into money who takes up, among other hobbies, an interest in reincarnation -- ancient souls being reborn into new bodies. The concept fascinates him, and, while his family tolerates his eccentric interests, he knows they regard him as a playboy with an expensive pastime. They humor him to keep him happy and motivated, though they attempt to coax him with pursuits more worthy of his station.
He speaks of a few case studies -- in earnest there are few authentic specimens that convince him he's met someone who genuinely personifies this phenomenon.
And then he meets Mallory (sp?). Forgive me, like his other works it's been some time since I've read After Dachau. The narrator's name escapes me, but it's his encounter with Mallory that (gimmicky as you may accuse the author) leads the narrator into a much new understanding of the world in which he lives. Mallory appears to have possessed the body of a girl who seems utterly, stark-raving mad. She shouts at the narrator accusing him of murder. Even though he's clearly the most mild mannered, harmless guy. However when we learn whom it is that is occupying this body (who possesses ID indicating another name entirely, of course), the reader has two major epiphanies the narrator was too myopic to share with his audience. A. This story takes place two millennia in our future and B. The future they find themselves in is a VERY alternate one, with but one chief distinction. Enter the significance of the book's grim title and "Mallory's" reincarnated identity. We learn, mild-mannered as our narrator seems, he is a part of a macabre history he only just begins to learn by meeting his "specimen".
The adventure of the narrator proving his thesis accurate and Mallory, that she's not crazy, but in fact a very different girl than the one she presents lead to apocryphal, damning knowledge, and then his ultimate denouement with "The Powers That Be". This approach to (what I would describe as) poli sci fi was a truly surprising, disturbing, and not manifesto-esque like his other works, but rather, ACTUAL fiction that still demonstrates a formula which NETWORKS this tale to his other bodies of work. IT, just as THEY, are a greater, overarching editorial about how twists in history affect culture and the human animal as a whole.
June 13, 2019
I picked up Quinn's book without preparing for it and, unsurprisingly in retrospect (it is Daniel Quinn, after all), it jolted me wide awake. Literally. I couldn't sleep well after reading the first few chapters and I got the sense that something in this novel's world was awfully wrong. But I couldn't put my finger on it. Then a few chapters later the wrongness was named. The novel is set 2000 years in the future in a world in which the Nazis won and their vision of an Aryan Nation became a reality. And the major question that the main characters ask themselves and of the world they're now in, "What now?", keeps reverberating. What DO you do when you fully realize the atrocities of yesteryear? Atrocities that your ancestors committed knowingly? And from which you have benefited and will continue to benefit?
(Do these questions sound familiar and all-too-real?)
(Do these questions sound familiar and all-too-real?)
January 15, 2020
This is my second Daniel Quinn piece I’ve read and so far he’s got me sold. You see “Dachau” and think oh man that’s gonna be heavy. It was...but in a different way than I’d expected.
I’d say it’s another book that takes a magnifying glass to humanity in that “awww mannn” kinda way.
Imagine the Nazis and Germany did win the war. Imagine the Aryan race eventually became the only race after all the other races were wiped out (on purpose). Imagine future humans don’t quite remember the wiping out part and only vaguely there used to be “mongrels” in the past.
Now combine that with some mysticism and that’s this book. Some “past” lives slip through, some people remember...but...do they care?
The end lost me a lil bit and was a hair cheesy BUT I GET IT and why Quinn ended it was way he did. Fortunately, I love cheese.
I’d say it’s another book that takes a magnifying glass to humanity in that “awww mannn” kinda way.
Imagine the Nazis and Germany did win the war. Imagine the Aryan race eventually became the only race after all the other races were wiped out (on purpose). Imagine future humans don’t quite remember the wiping out part and only vaguely there used to be “mongrels” in the past.
Now combine that with some mysticism and that’s this book. Some “past” lives slip through, some people remember...but...do they care?
The end lost me a lil bit and was a hair cheesy BUT I GET IT and why Quinn ended it was way he did. Fortunately, I love cheese.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 22, 2019
My very well thought out review was somehow deleted in a site error before it posted, so let's see if I can piece it back together:
I'm not sure what to make of this book. Worth reading, and a quick read, but certainly not what I was expecting. If you'd asked me after the first 100+ pages, I would have said it was absolutely brilliant. While the epilogue ties in with that portion of the story and does provide some measure of resolution, the rest of the book goes in an entirely different and not entirely welcome direction. I bought this book many years ago when it first came out and only recently rediscovered it on my shelf, so I wonder whether my opinion would have been different had I read it then.
I'm not sure what to make of this book. Worth reading, and a quick read, but certainly not what I was expecting. If you'd asked me after the first 100+ pages, I would have said it was absolutely brilliant. While the epilogue ties in with that portion of the story and does provide some measure of resolution, the rest of the book goes in an entirely different and not entirely welcome direction. I bought this book many years ago when it first came out and only recently rediscovered it on my shelf, so I wonder whether my opinion would have been different had I read it then.
January 29, 2020
It’s was an all right read. It was an interesting concept that fizzled out after setting up characters and then building to a climax that leveled out to a strident drop off the cliff. Maybe that’s the point, but it did close out nicely from the flatness that it dove into close to the end.
I enjoyed the alternative look at history and getting me thinking about how our history is displayed and taught, but I truly wanted more focus on the reincarnations and something to kickstart big or to take the mystery of Harry’s character and throw coverups and unveil all the secrets the Aryan race alter and control.
I enjoyed the alternative look at history and getting me thinking about how our history is displayed and taught, but I truly wanted more focus on the reincarnations and something to kickstart big or to take the mystery of Harry’s character and throw coverups and unveil all the secrets the Aryan race alter and control.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 29, 2018
I read this without realizing it was a scifi/alternate history novel and went into it blind knowing only that I've greatly enjoyed 5 of Daniel Quinn's other books. I don't believe that I even read the description. Rather, it was my 'Q' book for my 2018 A-Z challenge. I was expecting a more straightforward philosophical novel and while this novel definitely has some philosophy in it, the scifi aspect took me by surprise. It was good to see another side of Quinn's writing. In the end, this book basically boils down to .
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