Fatherland / Enigma

by Robert Harris

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Dystopia, Historical

387 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1997

About the author

ROBERT HARRIS is the author of nine best-selling novels: Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium, The Ghost Writer, Conspirata, The Fear Index, and An Officer and a Spy. Several of his books have been adapted to film, most recently The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. He lives in the village of Kintbury, England, with his wife, Gill Hornby.

Reviews

[Don]

added
september 20, 2008 not sure if read

[Neil Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Harris’ Fatherland is a classic - perhaps THE classic in the genre of historical ‘what if’ / whodunnit, as an intrepid, conscientious and disillusioned criminal police inspector tries to solve the murder of a high-ranking Nazi party official in …. 1964. Yes, 1964 - the scenario is that Germany has won the war and rules the European continent at the head of a European ‘community’ with the Reichmark as its common currency. Harris plausibly but sketchily outlines how the war was won - the breaking of the enigma code was circumvented by Germany, allowing her to dominate the oceans starving Britain into submission with submarine warfare, while in the East operation Barbarossa succeeded with Moscow succumbing. In the West, America has defeated Japan and fought Nazi Germany into a stalemate, which Harris cleverly refers to as the ‘cold war’. There are hints of a war without end east of the Urals as Soviet resistance doggedly continues for decades. The Berlin of 1964 is the actual one that Speer had planned to build after the war; there is a tantalizing reference to an SS academy in Oxford. In America, Nazi sympathizer Joseph Kennedy is president and running for re-election.

The plausibility of the sliding-door alternative view of history Harris constructs is based on the fact that all the real characters who appear in the novel have their biographical details correct up until 1942, and thereafter he invents alternative futures for them; thus Reinhard Heydrich, architect of the final solution, did not die at the hands of his Czech assassins in Prague, but is alive and kicking in 1964. The Fuhrer himself still lives, with the plot unfolding around the week of his 75th year anniversary celebrations.

Fatherland is inevitably compared to other great works in the genre, including Philip Dick’s The man in the high castle or the work of Philip Roth, but this also veers into Orwellian territory with its chilling portrait of a totalitarian society and its workings. The Nazi state of 1964 is like a cross between the DDR and the Soviet Union, a dystopian, militaristic, controlled and censored society collapsing under the weight of its own criminality. At the heart of all is the dark and abominable secret that will finally undo the regime as it comes to light. What Harris accomplishes here is a believable vision of what Germany and Europe probably would have looked like had she won the war, plausible in every detail. What is surprising is that given the success of his creation, he was never tempted to go for a sequel or prequel.

[Gabor Hernadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fatherland

Brilliant alternative history book where Germany after winning WWII a preparing for a visit of the U.S. President. But after a police officer finds a naked man killed at the river, what he found during the investigation, can change everything...

Enigma
A matemathician returns to Bletchey park just to find himself in the middle of an mysterious spy game where surprises waiting for the reader even on the last pages.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first Robert Harris book I read. Interesting, gloomy and totally absorbing 'Fatherland' reiterates the horrors of Nazi Germany as it takes us to an alternative reality in which Hitler won the war. I look forward to reading more of Robert Harris' work.

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant ...