Readers
of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
(2005) will recall that some of the elder members of the
dysfunctional Vanger family retained pronounced Nazi sympathies and
that the family business once had strong ties with Nazi Germany. In
Redbreast,
Jo Nesbo investigates the role played by Nazism in Norway in World
War II and its ripple effects down to the Millennium present. In
particular Nesbo sets out to challenge the national myth that
according to one character the Norwegian population was “fighting
shoulder to shoulder against Nazism.” Nesbo achieves this feat of
dispelling the national self-image through multiple switches in time,
place and points of view.
This
story has personal resonance for Nesbo, a former stock broker and
still part time lead singer in a rock group. Before
his parents met each other, his father had been among the seven
thousand Norwegians who volunteered to fight alongside the Nazis
against the Communists on the Eastern Front. His mother remained in
Norway throughout the war and was a member of the national
resistance. When his father returned home, he was branded as a
traitor and spent three years in prison.
To
understand the assassin’s motivation, Nesbo for
almost half of this fast-paced and engrossing novel, alternates
between Hole’s investigations in the present and action during the
Second World War on the Eastern Front and a hospital in Vienna. He
focuses on five Norwegians stationed near Leningrad during the siege
and vividly conveys their endurance of the cold, the lice and their
constant fear of sudden death as they fight against the Communists.
Not all of them are Nazi ideologues; some are apolitical who joined
because they were unemployed and are willing to change sides if it
means more food and warmth. The most emotionally-charged moment is
the sniper death of their leader, whose spirit haunts and motivates
one of the unnamed survivors while convalescing in Vienna and
continues to do so for the next fifty years. He becomes convinced
that the official version constitutes “the great betrayal.” By
celebrating Norwegians’ heroic deeds, the myth ignores the
widespread collusion with the Germans under the wartime leadership of
the infamous Vidkun Quisling and the shameful post-war treatment of
the Eastern Front volunteers who were sentenced to jail terms and
experienced discrimination for the rest of their lives. He sees his
mission as executing individuals who nourished the national myth.
 |
| author Jo Nesbo |
Because
of the multiple perspectives, the reader knows more
than Hole does about the connections
between the vicious
shenanigans of the neo-Nazis and
the homicidal old soldier, and a subplot about a closet fascist in
the Foreign Service who uses his power to sexually blackmail a woman.
We wait for when or
if Hole will catch
up, a technique used by Nesbo to keep us reading. Yet we do not know
everything: the name of the dying man, the reason why the civil
servant becomes one of his victims and the identity of his most
symbolic target until near the end when Hole finds and reads (along
with us) the assassin’s memoir that fills in the historical and
present gaps. The novel culminates in Hole’s frantic attempt to
prevent a calamity, an ending that echoes The
Day of the Jackal.
One
final note: a shocking incident occurs about the middle of the book.
We know the identity of the individual who ordered the killing and
the reason for it but Hole does not. Again Nesbo deploys this
technique to motivate us to read further novels in the series to find
out how this episode will play itself out. He achieves his purpose.
 |
| (photo by Keith Penner) |
No comments:
Post a Comment