Scan barcode
A review by danarama
Mendelssohn is on the Roof by Jiří Weil
4.0
Set in Prague during the Nazi occupation in World War 2 and follows the lives of several different, mostly Jewish, characters. It's almost more a collection of loosely connected short stories than a novel.
From the back cover: "Julius Schlesinger, aspiring SS officer, has received his new orders to remove from the roof of Prague's concert hall the statue of the Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn. But which of the figures adorning the roof is the Jew? Remember his course on 'racial science,' Schlesinger instructs his men to pull down the statue with the biggest nose. Only as the statue they have carefully chosen begins to topple does he recognize that it is not Mendelssohn; it is Richard Wagner."
I picked this up in a bookstore in Prague last summer. Read it on the train back to Berlin, got about 2/3 through it and then got distracted by other books when we got home.
Picked it up off my shelf last night.
From the back cover: "Julius Schlesinger, aspiring SS officer, has received his new orders to remove from the roof of Prague's concert hall the statue of the Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn. But which of the figures adorning the roof is the Jew? Remember his course on 'racial science,' Schlesinger instructs his men to pull down the statue with the biggest nose. Only as the statue they have carefully chosen begins to topple does he recognize that it is not Mendelssohn; it is Richard Wagner."
I picked this up in a bookstore in Prague last summer. Read it on the train back to Berlin, got about 2/3 through it and then got distracted by other books when we got home.
Picked it up off my shelf last night.