Disjointed, yet beautiful at points. The reviews on library.com are unanimously depreciating or scathing, but that does not do justice to Bielski’s effort. What she tries to do in this novella, is to paint humanity at its most vulnerable, yet resilient, moments. She does so by presenting a slightly disjointed script served in three parts. The first part is set in occupied Paris, where Karl Bazinger, a German Wehrmacht officer seems to enjoy the time of his life, thriving on the cultural heritage and lively art scene of Paris. Karl is civilized and slowly realises that the Nazis are not civilised at all. Karl has to legally dispatch the very legitimate complaints and concerns of enemies of the Nazi Reich who are on death row. Karl has enjoyed an interesting life, travelling all over the world (Libya, Tibet, Cairo) speaking many exotic languages. The latter attracts suspicion on behalf of the Nazis. When the local Gestapo supremo indicates Karl is suspected of moving in treacherous circles (involving suspected British and Soviet spies), he realises his days in Paris are counted. He applies for a transfer to the Eastern Front, in order to save his wife and children. Karl’s best friend, and home village neighbour, Hans, finds himself in a similar predicament, though from a different ideological perspective. Where Karl shares the cultured mannerism and nationalist pride of the German army cadres, treating Nazi thugs with disdain and slowly grasping how perfidious Germany’s behaviour has been, ultimately forming the core of the July 1944 plot against Hitler, Hans is a communist member of a clandestine resistance network spying on the German army for the Soviets. Hans visits his friend in Paris for a mission. During this very mission Hans realises his cover has been blown. Time’s up. He spends a final evening at dinner with Karl and his cultured Parisian friends, before committing a desperate act – committing suicide while exonerating his beloved wife by filing a divorce on ideological grounds, suggesting his wife is a staunch Nazi supporter. At the same time he provides her with the wherewithal to escape to Swiss. The plot this far transpires in the first two parts, called Paris and Berlin, respectively. The final part, Kiev, introduces a whole new set of characters, pivoting around a Russian/Ukrainian female doctor, daughter of a deranged musician and eloped mother, who herself flees to her maternal grandparents in Moscow, who provide her with access to a superior medical Institute to train as a doctor. Katia marries a famous disciple of Freud, who is sent to the Gulag for the familiar bourgeois behaviour. The war finds her in Kiev practising as an independent doctor from her parental home, taking care of a Jewish family with whom she shares the building. The script gains in depth considerably in this part of the book. Babi Yar occurs. Katia’s father is returned home from a psychiatric institution (or else he would also have been killed by the Nazis). Her father plays the piano, is kept in the dark as to the fate of his second wife (who as a Jewess was killed at Babi Yar), and falls victim to occasional bouts of depression. However, he hits it off really well with the Jewish painter girl who lost her grandparents at Babi Yar and her parents as zeks in the camps. And then finally, Karl arrives in Kiev seeking and finding treatment for his skin disease with Katia. They fall in love (it seems). Katia gives birth to a twin, nine months after Karl meets his fatal accident in the Caucasus after having been cured by Katia. In the afterword, the author explains what happened to the characters and their offspring after the war. The novel is almost poetic at times, citing Mandelstam and other Soviet poets. It feels like a beautiful detail of a painting, of which the complete canvass is missing, yet the outline of the whole frame appears every now and then, fleetingly. ( )

Karl Bazinger é um capitão do exército nazista, bastante boêmio e mulherengo, mas não muito convicto de seu papel na guerra; sua crise de consciência se manifesta na forma de violentas erupções cutâneas aparentemente causadas pelo uniforme. Hans Bielenberg é integrante de uma rede de espionagem soviética infiltrado no Ministério da Aeronáutica alemão. Nos arredores de Kiev, a médica Katia Zvesdny atende uma comunidade judaica e cuida do pai, um músico que enlouqueceu depois que a mulher o deixou, enquanto espera notícias do marido, prisioneiro dos campos de Stálin. Graças a uma narrativa engenhosa, em que um ponto de vista desliza sorrateiramente para outro, sem muito alarde, penetramos na intimidade de pessoas comuns tentando desesperadamente manter algum tipo de comunicação. Costurando delicadamente a vida desses três protagonistas, Nella Bielski desvela histórias ligadas entre si pela tragédia dos tempos de guerra e por um desejo de continuar vivo nos escombros do mundo. Às margens dos rios Sena, Elba e Dniepre, Bielski nos mostra que os lampejos de felicidade são a melhor defesa da sanidade contra a podridão que parece tomar o mundo.

The book is pretty bad. The translation is dreadful. ( )

I picked up The Year of ‘42 on spec, in Toronto. I was disappointed. The first half of the book deals with two Germans, Karl Bazinger who has a cushy war in occupied Paris, and his old friend Hans Bielenberg who, unbeknownst to Karl, is involved in the German opposition to Hitler. Karl applies for the Eastern Front, partly because the Gestapo are starting to lean in and pressuring him to start to inform on his wide circle of society contacts and friends. Hans comes to Paris on some sort of secret mission for the resistance, and crosses paths again with Karl. Hans eventually has to commit suicide because the Gestapo is closing in on him. The second half of the novel is set in the Soviet Union where Katia cares for her demented father and carries on as a doctor, working privately, while waiting for her husband to return from the camps where a jilted suitor of Katia's managed to send him. Karl and Katia have a brief affair before Karl is killed and never sees his twin boys.

This novel didn't really work for me. I found it too disjointed, themes and characters not developed, and the insertion of the round-up of Jews for the killings at Babi Yar almost seemed artificial.

I wonder if, in choosing the name "Bielenberg" for the opposition character, the author was familiar with Peter Bielenberg and his wife Christabel who were members of the opposition. Christabel, English by birth, married Peter, a German lawyer, in 1934 and lived in Germany throughout the war. Her memoir, "The Past is Myself" is excellent in describing the atmosphere of the time and place, and also how otherwise good and normal people were seduced by, or at least did not oppose, the Nazi racial programs. ( )