The Assault by Harry Mulisch Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.49 You Save: $8.51 (57%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.73 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Assault
Book Review: Evil affects innocent people like a cancer.
Summary: 5 Stars
Chief Inspector Ploeg is shot and killed in the winter of 1945, in Nazi-occupied Holland. He was a cruel collaborator with Holland's Nazi occupation force, and was assassinated by Bolsheviks on a street where four houses stand. His killers will run away in the dark of night, but Nazi troops will assault the home of young Anton Steenwijk, killing his parents and brother. This is because Chief Inspector Ploeg's body was found in front of their house. It had been moved there after the murder.Anton spends the rest of the story trying to discover the exact events of that night, including why the body was moved before his house. He is reluctant to discover this past, because the memory is painful, and he almost does not want such illogical evil to have a logical explanation. Anton lives the second half of the twentieth century as normally as he can, encountering Ploeg's bullheaded son, and the various people who had also lived on his street, one at a time, with many years passing between each meeting. Near the end of the twentieth century, closer to the modern day, he encounters one of the people who knows the full story of the moved body, and Anton finally understands the mystery.
The book's ending is both poetic and shattering. We immediatly empathize with the innocent people who had lived in those four houses, and we decry the horrible mental torture which encompassed them after WWII. The events of that evening were caused by one hateful group of people murdering the representative of another hateful group, but the ill effects accrued to people who did not deserve it. Mulisch might be telling us that evil is a cancer. The actors in the main event, Ploeg, the Nazis, and the Bolsheviks, were the evil ones, but the four innocent households suffered.
To describe the way evil imprisons the innocent, Mulisch asks us to reflect on a classic moral quandary: He uses the allegory of a person who comes across a dual execution, and is given the choice of killing one person in order to save the other. He seems to be asking us, how can one blame an innocent person for choosing the lesser of two evils? Is it that person's fault, or is it the fault of the encompassing evil? While this is not what happens in the book, it is only a story Mulisch tells, but it is similar in moral depth, and Mulisch portrays and resolves his own dilemma in a fascinating and effective fashion.
This is a well-written book, sharp and concise, with interesting and sympathetic characters. Mulisch tells us a good story about every-day people, with a deep moral message at its core, and resolves it in a way that will have thoughtful readers reflecting on the nature of good, evil, chance and morality.
Book Review: Excellent book
Summary: 5 Stars
A historical subject and a story which is full with hidden references and symbols. Mulish is always amazing and never boring. Makes excellent subject for a reading class.Book Review: Fine book
Summary: 5 Stars
Book came on time. Condition as listed. Happy with purchase. Would do it again. AA++Book Review: Going on this, Mulisch is a novelist well worth exploring
Summary: 5 Stars
Brilliant long novella, spare yet rich with evocative asides, driven onward by the unresolved circumstances of an assault that is unravelled, laconically and very plausibly, over a lifetime. Has the narrative sureness of Graham Greene and the soul of William Trevor.
Mulisch, a recently deceased, top-rate writer acclaimed in his native Netherlands, is especially strong on collaboration vs resistance during the Hitler War, for deeply personal reasons. A novelist well worth exploring.
Book Review: Good story/bad translation
Summary: 3 Stars
I was looking forward to this book because I knew of Mulisch's history and reputation. The protagonist is unable to avoid confronting a traumatic night during World War Two, and finds himself unwittingly drawn back to that night, and confronting the complexity of moral issues that emerge from his discoveries. In this way, The Assault resembles The Reader and Out Stealing Horses, both of which are very well translated. Unfortunately, The Assault is poorly rendered and doesn't live up to its potential.