Prix Renaudot (Prix Théophraste-Renaudot)
The Disappearance of Josef Mengele (Verso Fiction)
A documentary narrative that tracks SS doctor Josef Mengele’s postwar flight and hiding in South America. Through research and reporting, it reveals the networks that sheltered him and the persistence of war-crime memory.
Work Information
Following the escape route shows how the shadow of war crimes still persists.
A nonfiction account that follows Mengele’s postwar trail using investigative reporting. It widens the frame to the people who sheltered him and asks hard questions about justice and memory.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Verso Books
- Published
- 2022-08-09
- Pages
- 217 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.83 x 1.52 x 19.76 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781788735889
- ISBN-10
- 1788735889
- Price
- 3629 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Biographical
An extraordinary novel about one of history’s most reviled figures, written as an action-packed historical biography For three decades, until the day he collapsed in the Brazilian surf in 1979, Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death who performed horrific experiments on the prisoners of Auschwitz, floated through South America in linen suits, keeping two steps ahead of Mossad agents, international police and the world’s journalists. In this rigorusly researched factual novel—drawn almost entirely from historical documents—Olivier Guez traces Mengele’s footsteps through these years of flight. This chilling novel situates the reader in a literary manhunt on the trail of one of the most elusive and evil figures of the twentieth century.
Olivier Guez is the author of several books, including L’Impossible retour: A History of Jews in Germany since 1945 , Praise of Dodging and The Revolutions of Jacques Koskas . In 2016, he received the German Best Screenplay Award for the film Fritz Bauer, A German Hero. Georgia de Chamberet is a committee member of English PEN's Writers in Translation programme. As an editor at Quartet Books in the 1990s she published contemporary writers Tahar Ben Jelloun, Annie Ernaux, Juan Carlos Onetti, Daniel Pennac and Simon Leys (winner of the 1992 Independent Award for Foreign Fiction) amongst others, as well as showcasing various Cuban writers in an anthology edited by Peter Bush.
Reviews
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Based on documents and interviews conducted with people who knew the angel of death post war. This is as far from the previous depections such as the boys from brazil as possible and shows the reality of how this monster spent his life on the run. Excellent
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A good novel about Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death. Recommended.
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This was excellent. But the translation should be better: I spotted too many typos & other slips.
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Josef Mengele, sadistic medical "researcher" at Auschwitz, was one of the hunted Nazis who escaped justice by fleeing to South America and being not-so-secretly funded by his wealthy family back in Germany. The author of this book, partly on the basis of Mengele's recovered papers and on that of extensive interviews, reconstructs the experiences of this fanatical anti-Semite and eugenicist as a "non-fiction novel." In explaining Mengele's path through Latin America, Geus discusses the political considerations of the West German, Israeli, Argentine, Uruguayan, and American governments that allowed Mengele to survive, if not exactly thrive, for thirty years after the downfall of the Third Reich. I would give this book a rating of 5 if it weren't so depressing!
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Admittedly, I went in with pretty low expectations as historical fiction can sometimes go off the rails. But this was a very good book about a very evil man. Definitely will be recommending.