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Maybe someday
34
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
31/100Critics
37/100Scholars
Author:
Stefan Hertmans, David McKay
Publisher:
Pantheon
Date:
August 29, 2023
Stefan Hertmans uncovers haunting details about the previous owner of his house and the crime he committed as a member of the Nazi police.
What The Reviewers Say
Remarkable origins.
Hertmans deftly blends reporting and speculation as he reimagines the lives these rooms once sheltered, laying out the terrible consequences of an ambitious man’s blinkered devotion to the bureaucracy of the Reich.
The Ascent lacks the originality and weight of Austerlitz, but Hertmans’s hybrid of history and fiction is nevertheless a powerful and humane reminder that the horrors of the past century are inexhaustibly fascinating and reverberate today..
The project of covering a whole life means that Hertmans must rush through things, and the details blur, so what should be a book of particulars becomes one of atmosphere.
