Rate this book

Os Óculos De Heidegger (2010)

by Thaisa Frank(Favorite Author)

3.39 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Intrínseca

review 1: Gleichantworten Mögen (Like Answers Like) hammered out in the same jaunty semicircle as Arbeit Macht Frei.The story for the most part takes part in the Compound of Scribes – various intellectuals that we’re pulled from lineup and camps to answer the letters to the dead.This is not your atypical historical fiction of the era of WWII or not, this is more an existentialist viewing of a set of situations. If you have read existentialist fiction before you know what to expect, if you haven’t I’m not going to spoil the ending. (i.e. go read it!)Even before you get into the meat of the existential crisis you get smatterings of Heidegger’s philosophy as the Compound of Scribes is presented with a letter from Heidegger to a former colleague who had been taken to Auschwit... morez. Obviously they can’t have him answer it; yet Fraulein Heidegger is still in enough favor to start bending ears. It becomes a twisted jumble of who is answering it and what they are getting out of it to set the stage for tossing all of the players into the existential crisis later in the book.Mixed in with this is the paranoia of why they need to answer all the unanswered letters (to people who will never read them, and the letters are planned on being displayed in a museum afterwards). This is more so due to the occult leanings of the political party to smooth over a combination of power hunger and needing to tie up ends.The other point that makes Elie think through the book is the whole Angel of Auschwitz – where supposedly this late in the war due to needing resources for the war they let someone walk out of Auschwitz. No one on the Reich side believes this, most of the resistance are torn if to believe it or not. Elie wants to believe it enough to make it happen as much as she can.The letters in the book are real letters from WWII, I don’t see anything on if the Compound of Scribes actually existed or not (searching for it, just brings up book reviews) – not saying that it may not have existed differently just fictionalized here. There are things in this that probably didn’t exist in WWII, but could very well have – the few things that don’t fit are not glaring.The hardest thing you will have with this book is that it has no quotation marks. If this is to help bring about Heidegger’s falling out of the world that gets brought up (as his glasses are the object that he looked at to fall out of the world) to the reader – it does help. It also means it takes a good 20 pages to get used to reading the format. It also blurs the lines sometimes between thought and speech. The book is meant to make you think on what is going on, thus it leads to more though.
review 2: The story was unique, set during WWII, but built around an imagined world of translators working for the Nazis to write unanswered letters from the dead (or soon to be dead). I was intrigued in the storyline, though parts of it were a bit odd, so I dug in to see where it went.The first half of the book went along at a good pace, and I was interested to get to know the main characters and see where things went. About halfway in though, it felt like it started waning. There were a lot of characters that weren't very developed, and some of the story just seemed too unbelievable. I kept going though, wanting to see things through.Unfortunately, the last 1/5 or 1/6 of the book was rather disappointing. The story suddenly went in an unexpected and unexplained direction, and then the whole thing sped up so that it covered many decades in that segment. I almost wondered if the author had gotten bored with the story and just wanted to get it all over with. Perhaps she didn't want to give it the happy ending you hope for, but instead all you get is a very dissatisfying finish.The style of writing was really enjoyable, and the letters interspersed between chapters helped to illustrate what was going on at this time. However, the ending kind of sours the overall experience a bit. less

Download links for: Os Óculos de Heidegger

Advertising