レビュー

• Mal escrito, poco cohesionado y tono despectivo

  Me lo leí la mitad en inglés y la otra mitad en español. Tanto en inglés como en español está mal escrito, deja mucho que desear. Además, son más bien varias anécdotas juntas. Les falta cohesión durante el libro. A veces añade escenas que si las quitara, no afectaría en nada al libro. Quizás lo que menos me ha gustado es el tono. Es prejuicioso y más bien despectivo. Ya es suficientemente dura la etapa de los nazis para además añadirle más dureza personal. Como algo positivo, sí que creo que el contenjdo en sí está bien, pero ha fallado lo arriba mencionado. Se agradece que sea corto, se lee en dos tiradas.

• An exquisite and disturbing miniature of the lead up to the second world war.

  I couldn't put it better than this from Stephen Poole writing in The Guardian, '... a thoroughly gripping and mesmerising work of black comedy and political disaster. It seems designed single-mindedly to remind us that, as it says, “Great catastrophes often creep up on us in tiny steps.”'. A perfect book for our times.

• Reads more like a movie pitch than a history, which is OPK, but a surprise.

  Way too full of the writer's snide opinions of the players, but the overall design of the writing is clearly the basis of a movie script, so character definition counts. It's a different twist on history.

• this is now

  if you want to get the feeling of this moment and what it may portend, read this short poetic and gripping book. people make history. how are we doing??

• The Order of the Day

  I have had this short book on my 'tbr' list for a long while and, to be honest, I was slightly put off by the number of low star reviews. I knew it had won the 2017 Prix Goncourt book prize, but then often I tend to be put off books that win prizes. I haven't read a Booker prize winner since Hilary Mantel and haven't been enticed by long, or shortlists either, so it sat unread until his weekend, when I finally gave it a try and i was utterly blown away. This begins on the 20th February, 1933, when twenty four industrialists enter the palace of the President of the Assembly. Men whose names are inextricably linked to their companies, to industry and finance. Names like Opel, Krupp and Siemens. There to meet the President of the Reichstag, Hermann Goring, before the upcoming elections on March 5th. To have their egos flattered, hands shaken, to meet the new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler To be warned that the weak regime needs to be ended, that unions can be elimated, that they can make a profit, it they put their hands in their pockets... This is a series of short vignettes, which has, at its core, the annexation of Austria, but is about the Policy of Appeasement, the inability of men to stand up for what is right at the cost of their own careers and which takes us from the court at Neuremberg to Chamberlain hosting a lunch for Joachim von Ribbentrop (to whom, I must admit I was unaware, he was also his landlord as Ribbentrop rented one of his own properties). In the run up to war, of course politicians - still with WWI very much in their memories - wanted peace, but this shows the cost of cowardice, not only to Europe but to many of those personally involved. I thought it was brilliant and it has reminded me that, if I am intrigued by a book, I should give it a try. Even if others are not so impressed, it may become a favourite and I am sure this is in my top ten reads of the year.

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