Heidegger's Glasses

✍ Scribed by Thaisa Frank

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 631 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In her debut novel, Frank (A Brief History of Camouflage) presents a slightly fantastic tale of WWII, concerning an underground German bunker where multi-lingual intellectuals, spared the concentration camps, spend the war answering letters sent to concentration camp inmates who are, in all likelihood, already dead; called the Compound of Scribes, its mission is part record-keeping, part supernatural insurance plan, meant to keep the spirits of the dead from tipping off psychics to the Nazi's Final Solution. Despite their absurd (and potentially confusing) orders, the 50-some Scribes live in relative peace under the supervision of Elie and Gerhardt, lovers secretly working for the Resistance. Then a daunting task comes down from Goebbels himself-answer a letter from genius philosopher Martin Heidegger to his friend and optometrist Asher Englehardt, a prisoner in Auschwitz-setting events in motion that will threaten the lives of everyone in the compound. Taking readers to a curiously polyglot netherworld, a population removed from the horrors of the Reich even as it deals in some of its most intimate dispatches, Frank's vision of the Holocaust is original and startling, with compelling characters and a narrative that's both explosive and ponderous.

From

The Nazi Briefkation (Operation Mail), which forced concentration camp prisoners to write reassuring letters to loved ones that were sent instead to a central Berlin office, provides the historic framework for Franks debut novel. Here the Compound of Scribes, a group of detainees selected for their language skills, answers the prisoners letters in their original language, a mission devised by Nazi believers in the occult to assuage the dead. At the heart of this communityhoused in an underground tunnel cunningly fashioned to mimic a townis Elie Schacten, the lover of Compound commander SS officer Gerhardt Lodenstein, who hides her Polish ancestry as she makes forays to gather supplies and assist escaping fugitives. When prominent philosopher Martin Heidegger writes fellow philosopher and optometrist Asher Engelhardt in Auschwitz, the Scribes are ordered to answer Heideggers letter, an operation botched by an SS flunky that leads to endangering the entire Compound. Written in the precise prose that has garnered praise for Franks short fiction, this surreal tale is a vivid reminder of what we must not forget. --Michele Leber