Just Olga

Hello all:

I bring you the review of a book by an author who has visited this blog frequently, and whose books never leave readers indifferent. He deals in historical fiction and always takes it a step further. And this time is no different.

The Long Farewell by Bob Van Laerhoven

A young man with an Oedipus complex in 1930s Dresden, Hermann Becht loses himself in the social and political motives of his time.

His father is in the SS, his mother is Belarusian, and his girlfriend is Jewish. After a brutal clash with his father, Hermann and his mother flee to Paris. Swept along by a maelstrom of events, Hermann ends up as a spy for the British in the Polish extermination camp Treblinka.

The trauma of what he sees in this realm of death intensifies his pessimistic outlook on humanity. In Switzerland, the famous psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung tries to free Hermann of his frightening schizophrenia, but fails to unravel the power of the young man’s emotions, especially his intense hate for his father.

What follows is a tragic chain of events, leading to Hermann’s ultimate revenge on his father: the apocalyptic bombing of Dresden.

THE LONG FAREWELL is an unforgettable exploration of fascism’s lure and the roots of the Holocaust. More than ever, the novel is a mirror for our modern times.

About the author:

Bob van Laerhoven was born on August 8th, 1953 in the sandy soil of Antwerp’s Kempen, a region in Flanders (Belgium), bordering to The Netherlands, where according to the cliché ‘pig-headed clodhoppers’ live. This perhaps explains why he started to write stories at a particularly young age. A number of his stories were published in English, French, German, Polish, Spanish, and Slovenian.

DEBUT

Van Laerhoven made his debut as a novelist in 1985 with “Nachtspel – Night Game.” He quickly became known for his ‘un-Flemish’ style: he writes colorful, kaleidoscopic novels in which the fate of the individual is closely related to broad social transformations. His style slowly evolved in his later novels to embrace more personal themes while continuing to branch out into the world at large. International flair has become his trademark.

AVID TRAVELLER

Bob Van Laerhoven became a full-time author in 1991. The context of his stories isn’t invented behind his desk, rather it is rooted in personal experience. As a freelance travel writer, for example, he explored conflicts and trouble-spots across the globe from the early 1990s to 2004. Echoes of his experiences on the road also trickle through in his novels. Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, Gaza, Iran, Mozambique, Burundi, Lebanon, Iraq, Myanmar… to name but a few.

MASS MURDERS

During the Bosnian war, Van Laerhoven spent part of 1992 in the besieged city of Sarajevo. Three years later he was working for MSF – Doctors without frontiers – in the Bosnian city of Tuzla during the NATO bombings. At that moment the refugees arrived from the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica. Van Laerhoven was the first writer from the Low Countries to be given the chance to speak to the refugees. His conversations resulted in a travel book: “Srebrenica. Getuigen van massamoord – Srebrenica. Testimony to a Mass Murder.” The book denounces the rape and torture of the Muslim population of this Bosnian-Serbian enclave and is based on first-hand testimonies. He also concludes that mass murders took place, an idea that was questioned at the time but later proven accurate.

MULTIFACETED OEUVRE

All these experiences contribute to Bob Van Laerhoven’s rich and commendable oeuvre, an oeuvre that typifies him as the versatile author of novels, travel stories, theatre pieces, biographies, non-fiction, letters, columns, articles… He is also a prize-winning author: in 2007 he won the Hercule Poirot Prize for best crime-novel of the year with “De Wraak van Baudelaire – Baudelaire’s Revenge.” “Baudelaire’s Revenge” has been published in the USA, France, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Russia. In 2014, a second French translation of one of his titles has been published in France and Canada. “Le Mensonge d’Alejandro” is set in a fictitious South-American dictatorship in the eighties. The “junta” in this novel is a symbol for the murderous dictatorships in South-America (Chile and Argentine, to mention two) during the seventies and beginning of the eighties. In The Netherlands and Belgium, his novel “De schaduw van de Mol” (The Shadow Of The Mole) was published in November 2015. The novel is set in the Argonne-region of France in 1916. In 2017 followed “Dossier Feuerhand (The Firehand Files), set in Berlin in 1921.

“Baudelaire’s Revenge” is the winner of the USA BEST BOOK AWARDS 2014 in the category Fiction: mystery/suspense.

In April 2015 The Anaphora Literary Press published the collection of short stories “Dangerous Obsessions” in the US, Australia, UK, and Canada, in paperback, e-book, and hardcover. “Dangerous Obsessions” was voted “best short story collection of 2015 in The San Diego Book Review. In May 2017, Месть Бодлерa, the Russian edition of “Baudelaire’s Revenge” was published. “Dangerous Obsessions” has been published in Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, and Spanish editions. In January 2018 followed “Heart Fever”, a second collection of short stories, published by The Anaphora Literary Press. The collection came out in German, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish. “Heart Fever” was one of the five finalists – and the only non-American author – of the Silver Falchion Award 2018 in the category “short stories collections.” In April 2018, Crime Wave Press (Hong Kong) brought forth the English language publication of “Return to Hiroshima”, Brian Doyle’s translation of the novel “Terug naar Hiroshima”. The British quality review blog “MurderMayhem&More” listed “Return to Hiroshima” in the top ten of international crime novels in 2018. Readers’ Favorite gave Five Stars. In August 2021, Next Chapter published “Alejandro’s Lie,” the English translation of “Alejandro’s leugen.”

My review:

I discovered Bob Van Laerhoven, a Belgian author, and his books several years ago, and I have read many of his novels and short stories that have been translated into English, and always enjoyed them, although “enjoy” is not the right word. Because this author always chooses dark and morally complex and ambiguous subjects, hard to write about and not easy to read either. His novels are a combination of beautiful and compelling writing with profoundly dark subjects that dig deep into the human soul. And this novel is not an exception.

The description above covers the main facts of the plot. This is a novel set in a historical period of turmoil, where we follow a young boy, Hermann Becht, growing up in Dresden, at the time of Hitler’s rise to power. His loving father becomes an eager follower of Hitler, ready to do anything, including betraying superiors and family, to go up the ladder and end up in the SS. His mother, a Belarusian with a traumatic and shady past, sees her husband become a stranger and her own identity questioned, and decides to leave, after a confrontation between her husband and her son that makes her afraid for what might happen next.

Hermann witnesses terrible things all around him, some real and some not, and he finds it more and more difficult to tell the difference. Having lived in Paris, London, after losing his mother and discovering that his uncle is not the person he thought, he does not feel he belongs anywhere, and he feels empty. He tries to fill his void by becoming an artist, and he ends up getting involved in the British Secret Service more by chance than by will.

Hermann’s story goes beyond the typical coming-of-age tale, as his experiences in some way move in parallel and mirror (perhaps using a distorting mirror) the history of Germany and the world at the time. He is a witness to some momentous events, to the point of meeting Hitler in extraordinary circumstances, visiting Treblinka right at the moment when the prisoners of the camp revolted, or being the subject of Carl Jung’s analysis in Berne.

His demons, which he does not fully acknowledge until it is very late, are very similar to those that seem to be behind much of what is wrong with the world, at the time and nowadays. The bombing of Dresden, a historical episode that has been the subject of much controversy (a necessary part of the allied campaign to put an end to the war in Europe, or a war crime, depending on the sources one consults), becomes a symbol and an embodiment of the destructive power of hatred and of the demons of the collective unconscious, of the shadow that most of us fail to acknowledge and never want to analyse or look at too deeply, because it is scary and ugly. But, it is a part of us, and ignoring it causes more harm than good.

The writing is superb, as usual, and combines the beauty of the descriptions and the images the language creates, with the horror of some of the events Hermann witnesses. The story is narrated in the third person, mostly from Hermann’s point of view, but there are also moments when we follow other characters or see things from their perspective, and that gives us a clearer perspective. Although those changes of perspective can take place within the same chapter, and more than once, they are not confusing or difficult to follow, so readers do not need to worry about that. The writing is highly symbolic, and this is not an easy read or a page-turner in the usual sense, but a book that requires attention, concentration, and can be challenging at times, although the rewards are high.

This is not a book for everybody, and it comes with a warning, as there is much violence and very dark and cruel subjects are touched upon. My recommendation remains the same I made for the first book by Van Laerhoven I read: if you’re looking for a complex and challenging historical novel and don’t shrink from dark subjects, this is a pretty unique book, and one that seems more necessary and current now than ever.

I thank the author for providing me with an ARC copy of this book, which I freely chose to review.

Thanks to the author for this novel, and to all of you for visiting, reading, liking, and sharing. Do keep smiling and take care.

Oh, and many of you will remember that I read and reviewed Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene’s book Dead of Winter, which she published in a serialised version some time ago. Well, if any of you didn’t read it at the time, you are in luck, because she has published it in an Omnibus version, so you have a chance to catch up with this wonderfully imaginative and beautifully written story. Make sure you don’t miss this opportunity. I am not a great fan of high fantasy but adored this story, and I know I am not the only one.

You can find the details in a couple of her posts, and the second includes an excerpt: