Commemorations

by Hans Herlin

Fiction, The story of a manhunt for a Nazi SS doctor. A love story of the man hunting the doctor for the death of the woman he loved.

Unknown Binding

About the author

Hans Herlin (1925–December 20, 1994) was a German novelist. Born in Stadtlohn, North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), he was drafted into the Luftwaffe in World War II and trained as a pilot. In 1944 he fled to Switzerland and lived in France from 1972. He started a writing career as a journalist and worked his way up to become managing editor of Molden, one of Germany's largest publishing houses. In 1961 he wrote a detailed account of the St Louis voyage with 900+ Jewish refugees from Hamburg to Cuba and on to Antwerp, called "Kein gelobtes Land". In 1972 he began writing books full time, and in 1975 published his best known novel Commemorations, about "Nazi skeletons in the national closet".Commemorations was published in the United States in 1975 by St. Martin's Press. His books have been published in more than 18 countries.

Herlin died of a heart attack at age 68, at his home in southern France on December 20, 1994.

Reviews

[Ted Bamford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The style of writing used is quite unlike in any other novel I have read; it is personal and direct, not pretentious and condescending. Herlin manages to create a novel out of, what is essentially, a retired photographer writing a commemorative volume on a wealthy family, and he does not achieve this through elaborate sequences of events, but out of his engaging and direct style of writing. One other unique device used by Herlin is that of the ending of the novel, placed at the beginning, used to string you along, as it is so very detached from what the subsequent 200 pages would describe.

It is quite a phenomenal read.
I would highly recommend.