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.

As much a story of the family and the setting as of the horrible yet ludicrous figure at its center, the book, while overlong, delivers a haunting, detailed record of people, place, and atmosphere..

A thoughtful and unflinching narrative.