The Pages
A novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
An entirely original novel in which a book—Joseph Roth's masterpiece Rebellion—narrates its own astonishing life story, from 1930s Germany to the present day, at the heart of a gripping mystery.
“A powerful, powerful piece of work.” —Colum McCann, best-selling author of Apeirogon
One old copy of the novel Rebellion sits in Lena Knecht’s tote bag, about to accompany her on a journey from New York to Berlin in search of a clue to the hand-drawn map on its last page. It is the brilliantly captivating voice of this novel—a first edition nearly burned by Nazis in May 1933—that is our narrator.
Fast-paced and tightly plotted, The Pages brings together a multitude of dazzling characters, real and invented, in a sweeping story of survival, chance, and the joys and struggles of love. At its center are Roth, an Austrian Jewish author on the run, and his wife, Friederike, who falls victim to mental illness as Europe descends into war. With vivid evocations of Germany under Nazism and today, The Pages dramatically illuminates the connections between past and present as it looks at censorship, oppression, and violence. Here is a propulsive, inspiring tale of literature over a hundred years: a novel for book lovers everywhere that will bring a fresh audience to this acclaimed writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A first edition of Austrian Jewish writer's Joseph Roth's Rebellion, a "short novel about a barrel organ player who lost his leg in the First World War," serves as the narrator of this intriguing mystery from Hamilton (Dublin Palms). The book, published in 1924, introduces itself in the present as part of the luggage of Lena Knecht, an artist flying from New York to Berlin, the place where Rebellion was written. Lena, who has discovered that someone has drawn a map on a blank page at the back depicting a bridge, a path, a forest, and a farm, hopes to find information in Berlin that will unlock the map's secret meaning. The theft of her handbag with the book inside complicates her quest. Hamilton makes buy-in to his conceit easy as he alternates between sections centered on the intrigue surrounding the map and flashbacks to Roth's life and his experiences under the Nazis, who burned copies of Rebellion and forced him to flee Germany in 1933. The pacing and prose are first-rate. This unusual storytelling choice works better than most mysteries told from the perspective of an intelligent animal.
