The German Mujahid

Cheikh Hassan, formerly Hans Schiller, was a loyal Nazi, an SS officer, a war criminal, a fugitive, a weapons instructor to the Algerian mujahedin, a convert to Islam, a husband to a village girl, a father of two boys, finally a civil war victim.The two sons had emigrated earlier to France. The elder one became a yuppi, the younger one remained on the dark side: failed school, tangled with the law, life in the settlement with other unemployed Algerian youths, among Islamic fundamentalists.The elder brother (my namesake Helmut plus Rachid, contracted to Rachel) commits suicide. The younger one, Malek Ulrich = Malrich, reads the diaries and documents and catches fire: his brother had found out about the holocaust past of their father and could not take it. Malrich follows the trail.The text is a mixture of diaries of both brothers. We learn a lot about France and its immigrants, about Germany and its past and present (and this all seems true to me, up to a point, while I can't be equally assertive about France and Algeria), about Algeria and its history.The author is an Algerian living in France. The book was apparently banned in Algeria. The subject was taboo, it seems.While the book is not well edited (too many printing errors), and the voices of the two narrators are not fully plausible, the book would deserve 5 stars for the sheer guts to attack this magnitude of 20th century history problems: the holocaust, the Algerian independence war, then the Algerian civil war. And we don't underestimate the dynamite in the French immigrant circles. (The story is set in the mid 90s; the book was published in 2008. We don't have a 9-11 situation, but we are in the global build-up.)Young Malrich becomes an anti-fundamentalist activist. Is that plausible? I don't quite see the curve from realizing what his father did to taking a stance against his former jihad friends.Rachel's suicide is also a rather unexplained act: he seemed a tower of sensible reason from his diary pages, initially. Then a neo-Nazi tells him, after he has acted plausibly in order to extract information: you are your father's son. Which is exactly what he had tried to convey, yet it rocks him. I ask you, is that plausible?The author has not made the process of change plausible, not for either of the brothers. That is why I deduct a star.I also find one potentially killing technical error in the plot: if I am not misunderstanding something, the neo-Nazi whom Rachel meets in the Alsace, a certain Adolphe, the son of Jean 92, who set up the Nazi fugitive network, says of himself that he was born in 42. Yet he talks about his collaboration in the post-war network as if he had been much involved.I do not appreciate it if the details don't tally.In other words, after a strong start, some disappointment sets in.But it is well worth reading for historical context.

Boualem Sansal's novel tells a very important story, by which I mean not so much the story of what happens to his characters but the pattern into which their story fits. Sansal depicts very memorably the ways in which at least certain places in Europe become radicalized in our time. He describes how with the breakdown of order in immigrant slums in France (though he could be writing about the Netherlands or England as well), radical clerics will move in and strike a bargain--they bring order but at the price of introducing the neighborhood to dangerous ideas. In so,doing, they bring meaning to the lives of the young people trapped in hopeless places, but the meaning is too often that of a Salafist type of radical Islam, which then begins seriously to undermine the liberal order of society at large. It is one of Europe's most pressing problems, and Sansal depicts it with the complexity it deserves, since there are no magical solutions.I don't mean by discussing the social implications of the book to downplay its artistic merits, which are considerable. It is narrated with skill about characters that one cares for. Still, for this reader, the main value of the book lies in the insights it gives about the tensions that exist between Islam and Western society--tensions that we risk a great deal by ignoring.

Two brothers living in Paris and its exurbs--of Algerian background learn about their past and in so doing learn their father was a Nazi of some renown and their birthplace, a new hotbed of antisemitic hatred. Sounds promising, right? The translation is Britannic--I always find that distracting, a pet peeve of mine and to top it off the book is full of typos. Story-wise everything is so on the nose that you feel you're just being told and told rather than sharing the character's discoveries. It's sad because the concept is terrific.I learned about this book from a glowing review at the New Republic and there is no doubt that books by Arabs that are sensitive to the holocaust: actually believe it happened and that it terribly scarred a people, and is sympathetic to Jewish people in general are the rarest objects on earth. So yes, that's amazing. Great concept, great themes, good looking cover, rotten execution.

A very new angle on the effects of the Holocaust on the greater world. A look at its effects from the eyes of a Algerian Muslim. It is a deeply moving story.

Good.

A strong and powerful book, reviling the problems we now encounter with many Muslim communities in Europe. The author puts the radical Muslims with the Hitler in comparison.

Superb book, great insights into events following WW II, great insight to current international events and relations between countries, an eye-opening view toward the muslim community from Paris, France and the old Algerian Government. Highly recommended.

Excellent!

Really fascinating take on a Holocaust novel. The mix of radicalism in Islam, social unrest in France, and the connection to the Holocaust makes this a devastatingly tragic novel. A must read.