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andrew61 's review for:
The Assault: A Novel
by Harry Mulisch
In the last days of the second world war Anton Steenwijk his parents and his older brother are enjoying normal family life. They hear a shot and see that a man has been shot outside the small group of houses in which they live. the body is then moved to outside their house. The body is that of a known collaborator with the Nazi's a brutal man , but when the Germans arrive on the scene their reaction is severe and the events that unfold leave Anton eventually in the care of his Uncle and aunt in Amsterdam. The book then visits Anton again through 5 subsequent stages in his life up to 1981. Within those chapters he confronts the events of that night and how they have haunted him and those other individuals whose lives it touched. These include the son of the collaborator , one of the resistance fighters who fired the shot, and finally the daughter of the family outside of whose hose the body originally fell.
This is a book that read in one breath like a thriller but ultimately is a very profound contemplation on the cruelty of men in war, and the fact that a single event can have effects that ripple throughout an individuals adult life. The conversations that Anton has with the various characters are very well done leaving the reader unclear as to their sympathies and Anton's life is sympathetically drawn as we grow old with him as his past impacts on his own relationships. The finale knocked me sideways with something I didn't expect and it completely pulled away all my thoughts about the original incident.
An excellent book .
This is a book that read in one breath like a thriller but ultimately is a very profound contemplation on the cruelty of men in war, and the fact that a single event can have effects that ripple throughout an individuals adult life. The conversations that Anton has with the various characters are very well done leaving the reader unclear as to their sympathies and Anton's life is sympathetically drawn as we grow old with him as his past impacts on his own relationships. The finale knocked me sideways with something I didn't expect and it completely pulled away all my thoughts about the original incident.
An excellent book .