Germania
A Novel
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $15.99
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
In their youth, Manni and Franzi, together with their brothers, Ziggy and Sebastian, captured Germany's collective imagination as the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers -- one of the most popular vaudeville acts of the old Weimar days. The ensuing years have, however, found the Jewish brothers estranged and ensconced in various occupations as the war is drawing near its end and a German surrender is imminent. Manni is traveling through the Ruhr Valley with Albert Speer, who is intent on subverting Hitler's apocalyptic plan to destroy the German industrial heartland before the Allies arrive; Franzi has become inextricably attached to Heinrich Himmler's entourage as astrologer and masseur; and Ziggy and Sebastian have each been employed in pursuits that threaten to compromise irrevocably their own safety and ideologies.
Now, with the Russian noose tightening around Berlin and the remnants of the Nazi government fleeing north to Flensburg, the Loerber brothers are unexpectedly reunited. As Himmler and Speer vie to become the next Führer, deluded into believing they can strike a bargain with Eisenhower and escape their criminal fates, the Loerbers must employ all their talents -- and whatever magic they possess -- to rescue themselves and one another.
Deftly written and darkly funny, Germania is an astounding adventure tale -- with subplots involving a hidden cache of Nazi gold, Hitler's miracle U-boats, and Speer's secret plan to live out his days hunting walrus in Greenland -- and a remarkably imaginative novel from a gifted new writing talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former journalist McNally puts a magical spin on the last days of the Third Reich in his debut, a busy, beguiling novel perhaps too overstuffed with a dizzying cast and troves of lesser-known historical footnotes. Embedded in politics and far from the atrocities of the Nazi regime, figures like Albert Speer, Heinrich Himmler and Karl D nitz become curiously sympathetic as they try to manipulate their ways out of their ineluctable futures. Woven throughout is the story of the Loerber quadruplets (known before the war as the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers think: the Comedian Harmonists), who have psychic abilities and positions of power inside and in opposition to the Nazi regime: Manni is an assassin who can manipulate people's wills; Sebastian, long thought dead, works for the Blood of Israel resistance and can mass-broadcast dreams; Ziggy is a U-boat captain who can hear and control others' thoughts; and Franzi is a triple-agent in the SS's occult studies division and becomes Himmler's masseur and psychic adviser. The Loerber brothers, however, turn out to be less interesting on the page than Himmler, Speer and their contemporaries, though McNally's blending of the fantastical with historical record broadens and enriches an oft-told story.
