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Le zone morte
Questo libro ricostruisce la seconda guerra mondiale sul fronte orientale, visto attraverso gli occhi di un soldato tedesco adolescente. In un primo momento un'avventura emozionante, la guerra di giovane Guy Sajer diventa nella vastità gelida dell'Ucraina, una semplice, disperata lotta per la sopravvivenza contro il freddo, la fame, e, soprattutto, l'artiglieria sovietica terrificante. In qualità di membro della divisione d'elite Gross Deutschland, ha combattuto in tutte le grandi battaglie da Kursk a Kharkov. Dal punto di vista del fante tedesco questo diventa un libro di memorie di guerra unico: Christian Science Monitor ha detto che "potrebbe essere il libro sulla Seconda Guerra Mondiale che è stato così a lungo atteso." Il libro contiene le foto di soldati che combattono attraverso la neve, il fango, villaggi bruciati, e le città divenute macerie che raffigurano i disagi e la distruttività della guerra.
364 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 7, 2016
Death Zones – Can Anyone Remain Uncorrupted?
Death Zones from Danish author and screenwriter is not something that would ever be classed as Nordic Noir, in fact it is far from it. This is no beach read, something to pick up on the way through departures it is far too depressing for that. At times the plot may seem rather convoluted but even though it is, it never really detracts from the story.
I am sure there will be some that will object at the amount of mindless violence in Death Zones but where and when this book is set the whole area was the wild east. Law meant nothing, life meant nothing, and if you were Jewish or Slavic you could expect a very violent death. The book is set in 1943 and the action takes place in what was Belorussia and Hamburg during the Battle of Kursk.
The book is based on real events that did happen out in Eastern Europe during the war while creative licence has added the added dimension of a story behind what was happening. Death Zones reminds the reader that evil not only consumes the victim but the perpetrators are also consumed even if they do not recognise it.
The story is set around German detective Oberleutnant Heinrich Hoffmann, who also acts as the narrator, who has been posted out to the limits of the Reich in Belorussia. A German General and his wife have been murdered by partisans, he has been told, but he is charged with leading the investigation. At the same time, he must also walk the fine line between the SS and other Nazi units as well as the Wehrmacht and numerous Reich officials.
In the manhunt that follows Hoffmann tries to retain his humanity in the face of mounting struggles between his friend an SS officer and others within the SS. This is a divide nobody would want to be on because the wrong word or decision could mean instant death. Little does he realise the manhunt and chase will lead him home to Hamburg as it is being destroyed by the Allied bombings.
They way in which Pasternak has written Death Zones and it has been excellently translated it may seem somewhat disjointed. But the way it is written is as if the narrator is replicating a machine gun and the way in which it rattles when being fired.
Death Zones is an excellent book that does have large amounts of violence which replicate the events that took place during this period on the eastern fringes in the Reich. Death Zones does not sit easily in to any genre while it is both historical and a thriller, it does not really belong to that genre. Death Zones is an excellent read, and the reader may not like looking in to the face of humanity at its worst and asks can anyone remain uncorrupted?
Death Zones from Danish author and screenwriter is not something that would ever be classed as Nordic Noir, in fact it is far from it. This is no beach read, something to pick up on the way through departures it is far too depressing for that. At times the plot may seem rather convoluted but even though it is, it never really detracts from the story.
I am sure there will be some that will object at the amount of mindless violence in Death Zones but where and when this book is set the whole area was the wild east. Law meant nothing, life meant nothing, and if you were Jewish or Slavic you could expect a very violent death. The book is set in 1943 and the action takes place in what was Belorussia and Hamburg during the Battle of Kursk.
The book is based on real events that did happen out in Eastern Europe during the war while creative licence has added the added dimension of a story behind what was happening. Death Zones reminds the reader that evil not only consumes the victim but the perpetrators are also consumed even if they do not recognise it.
The story is set around German detective Oberleutnant Heinrich Hoffmann, who also acts as the narrator, who has been posted out to the limits of the Reich in Belorussia. A German General and his wife have been murdered by partisans, he has been told, but he is charged with leading the investigation. At the same time, he must also walk the fine line between the SS and other Nazi units as well as the Wehrmacht and numerous Reich officials.
In the manhunt that follows Hoffmann tries to retain his humanity in the face of mounting struggles between his friend an SS officer and others within the SS. This is a divide nobody would want to be on because the wrong word or decision could mean instant death. Little does he realise the manhunt and chase will lead him home to Hamburg as it is being destroyed by the Allied bombings.
They way in which Pasternak has written Death Zones and it has been excellently translated it may seem somewhat disjointed. But the way it is written is as if the narrator is replicating a machine gun and the way in which it rattles when being fired.
Death Zones is an excellent book that does have large amounts of violence which replicate the events that took place during this period on the eastern fringes in the Reich. Death Zones does not sit easily in to any genre while it is both historical and a thriller, it does not really belong to that genre. Death Zones is an excellent read, and the reader may not like looking in to the face of humanity at its worst and asks can anyone remain uncorrupted?
March 14, 2017
Danish author Simon Pasternak's "Death Zones" is definitely not for the faint-hearted reader. People die in the worst ways in the book - thrown into a wild boar pits, strung up by the feet and gutted, becoming human torches in the fire-bombing of Hamburg - but such deaths are common in war-torn 1943 Nazi-controlled Belorussia. The Battle of Kursk is raging to the east and Belorussia is under the hard-hand of the Nazi occupiers.
Pasternak's story is of war and its atrocities, but it's basically a straight-up detective story, told with cruel Nazi war realities attached. Hamburg native Heinrich Hoffmann is a Kripo detective in service in the occupied Belorussia. The killing machines of the Einsatzgruppen have been through the area. The Jewish population has largely been murdered but the area is a hot-bed of resistance. A high-ranking Nazi general and his movie-star wife are found murdered - the general, of course, murdered gruesomely - and Hoffmann is ordered to find the murderers. So begins the manhunt for the murderer. The hunt is long, betrayals are made at the turn of the trick, and Hoffmann often doesn't know what end is up.The war rages to the east and people are dying everywhere.
I don't normally write about the amount of violence in a book review. Most of the books I read aren't particularly violent and we're all adults here. But "Death Zones" is filled with distasteful violence -most of it organic to the plot - and the potential reader should know that in advance. Mine is the first review on Amazon/US, but there will be more. Please read all the reviews before you buy the book.
Pasternak's story is of war and its atrocities, but it's basically a straight-up detective story, told with cruel Nazi war realities attached. Hamburg native Heinrich Hoffmann is a Kripo detective in service in the occupied Belorussia. The killing machines of the Einsatzgruppen have been through the area. The Jewish population has largely been murdered but the area is a hot-bed of resistance. A high-ranking Nazi general and his movie-star wife are found murdered - the general, of course, murdered gruesomely - and Hoffmann is ordered to find the murderers. So begins the manhunt for the murderer. The hunt is long, betrayals are made at the turn of the trick, and Hoffmann often doesn't know what end is up.The war rages to the east and people are dying everywhere.
I don't normally write about the amount of violence in a book review. Most of the books I read aren't particularly violent and we're all adults here. But "Death Zones" is filled with distasteful violence -most of it organic to the plot - and the potential reader should know that in advance. Mine is the first review on Amazon/US, but there will be more. Please read all the reviews before you buy the book.
May 10, 2017
This is one of the grimmest books I've ever read. I'm comfortable saying that it is as disturbing as Cormac McCarthy's treatment of American westward expansion in "Blood Meridian"--which high-ranking Nazis not coincidentally compared to what they were doing ("Go East, young man!") in their search for Lebensraum in what historian Tim Snyder called the Bloodlands caught between Hitler and Stalin's empires. Pasternak has taken the very real and very ugly events prosecuted by the Einsatzgruppen in the former Soviet Union and put a policeman protagonist within them (full disclosure--I'm a fan of Philip Kerr's similar series, too) to build a solid noir genre plot. Like Kerr's, Martin Cruz Smith's, and James Ellroy's best books, there is a great attraction to accompanying such a protagonist on an investigation in the midst of so much crime, blood, and human misery. It may be the war, but the people his main character grew up with all seem to have lost their minds or souls, the people he meets on his journey (some of which were historical and very nasty figures like Oskar Dirlewanger) are often violent and horrid, and the struggle to hold onto himself is both poignant and riveting. There is plenty of ugliness in this book, and the author has tapped into the malaise I felt visiting certain places in Ukraine, the Baltics, and Nuremberg--locales that 70 years on have managed to hold onto the evil sown in their rich soil. I don't know what Mr. Pasternak is doing for his next project, but after "Death Zones" I'd be interested in reading that, too.
December 5, 2017
"Death Zones" is filled with distasteful violence -most of it organic to the plot - and the potential reader should know that in advance. To me, I LOVE SUCH NOVELS, it brings up my dark side!
Though I didn't find it well written at all, but I guess it's because of the translation.
If you are a fan of thriller, crimes and violent THIS IS A MUST TO READ!
Though I didn't find it well written at all, but I guess it's because of the translation.
If you are a fan of thriller, crimes and violent THIS IS A MUST TO READ!
June 4, 2013
Dødszoner af Simon Pasternak var en temmelig rå oplevelse. Mord, hjernemasse og moralsk forfald drev ned af væggene i fortællingens rum i en lind strøm. Og jeg nød det.
Jeg læser mest for et godt plot, og derfor får bogen også kun 4 af 5 stjerner. Til tider dominerede stemningsbeskrivelserne mere end handlingen. Det kan dårligt være anderledes i den kontekst som historien foregår i.
Men altså, en krimi, der foregår midt i et folkemord er ret genialt tænkt. En glimrende bog og subtil kommentar.
Jeg læser mest for et godt plot, og derfor får bogen også kun 4 af 5 stjerner. Til tider dominerede stemningsbeskrivelserne mere end handlingen. Det kan dårligt være anderledes i den kontekst som historien foregår i.
Men altså, en krimi, der foregår midt i et folkemord er ret genialt tænkt. En glimrende bog og subtil kommentar.
November 29, 2025
SS Üsteğemeni ve askeri soruşturmacı olan kahramanımız Heinrich Hoffmann, 1943 yılı yazında savaşla parçalanmış Beyaz Rusya’nın ölüm tarlalarındaki bir kasaba ahırında öldürülmüş ve vücutları kesilmiş haldeki Alman generalinin ve karısının katilini bulmakla görevlendirilir. Olayın tek tanığı konuşmakta zorlanan, dehşete düşmüş altı yaşında bir kız çocuğudur. Heinrich gerçeğin peşine düştükçe, yakılmış köylerden, toplu mezarlardan ve savaşın harabeye çevirdiği topraklardan geçen bir yolculuğa çıkar.
Bir cinayet soruşturması olarak başlayan roman, Alman birlikleri içindeki yozlaşma, sivillere uygulanan kitle şiddeti, ideolojik fanatizm ve insanların aşırı koşullar altındaki ahlaki çöküntüsü üzerine bir anlatıya dönüşüyor. İnsanın içini acıtacak gerçekler, melodrama kaçmadan en yalın ve gerçek haliyle bize sunuluyor. Savaşın karanlık köşelerini sorgulayan, unutulması zor bir anlatı.
Bir cinayet soruşturması olarak başlayan roman, Alman birlikleri içindeki yozlaşma, sivillere uygulanan kitle şiddeti, ideolojik fanatizm ve insanların aşırı koşullar altındaki ahlaki çöküntüsü üzerine bir anlatıya dönüşüyor. İnsanın içini acıtacak gerçekler, melodrama kaçmadan en yalın ve gerçek haliyle bize sunuluyor. Savaşın karanlık köşelerini sorgulayan, unutulması zor bir anlatı.
October 3, 2017
Good book - thriller in WW2 with German characters. Quite good plot but very gruesome. Difficult to read a book whose main character I really didn't like. Spoiled by many sections of dream like sequences especially in the second half of the book although I understand why the author included them. Altogether reasonable read but not a nice book.
May 15, 2017
2.5 stars
June 5, 2017
Brutal, visceral and vivid beyond belief. This is a book which pulls no punches, hides nothing and relentlessly reels off the horror of the Second World War. So very good.
August 3, 2018
Brutal read. Not enjoyable, which I could deal with but not when also the story didn’t really come together in the end. Not an author I will return too.
April 27, 2019
This story was quite disjointed (possibly because it is a translation) and is set in a horrific period in history. The plot just did not draw me in - and it is a book that I will easily forget.
April 19, 2021
Not for the faint of heart.
June 10, 2016
Started off well,however the violence was never ending and gratuitous ,which made me feel sick but did not move me which I thought it would. I felt it was disjointed,maybe translation?
Just not for me.
Just not for me.
March 9, 2014
Den er noget barsk noget om at blive et umenneske. Og en fin krimi samtidig.
April 17, 2016
Jeg mistede ærlig talt overblikket over hvad der foregik undervejs og hvorfor det var relevant. En skuffelse efter krimierne med ham jeg har læst.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews