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Posts from the ‘BW’s Reviews’ Category

May 24

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Non 1001 Book Review: The Seducer Jan Kjaerstad

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The Seducer Jan Kjaerstad
Published: 1993
606 pages
Original Language: Norwegian
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: ★★★★★ ♥
Find it here: The Seducer: A Novel

Synopsis (from Amazon): Interludes of memory and fancy are mixed with a murder investigation in this panoramic vision of contemporary Norway. Jonas Wergeland, a successful TV producer and well-recognized ladies man, returns home to find his wife murdered and his life suddenly splayed open for all to see. As Jonas becomes a detective into his wife’s death, the reader also begins to investigate Jonas himself, and the road his life has taken to reach this point, asking How do the pieces of a life fit together? Do they fit together at all? The life Jonas has built begins to peel away like the layers of an onion, slowly growing smaller. His quest for the killer becomes a quest into himself, his past, and everything that has made him the man he seems to be. This bestselling Norwegian novel transports and transfixes readers who come along for the ride. Read more

May 13

1001 Book Review: The Kindly Ones Jonathan Littell

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The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Little
Published in: 2006
Original Language: French
Awards: Prix Goncourt 2006
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating:★★★
Find it here: The Kindly Ones

Amazon Synopsis: Dr Max Aue is a family man and owner of a lace factory in post-war France. He is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a former SS intelligence officer and cold-blooded assassin. He was an observer and then a participant in Nazi atrocities on the Eastern Front, he was present at the siege of Stalingrad, at the death camps, and finally caught up in the overthrow of the Nazis and the nightmarish fall of Berlin.

His world was peopled by Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer and, of course, Hitler himself.

Max is looking back at his life with cool-eyed precision; he is speaking out now to set the record straight. Read more

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