Auteur: Ira Levin
Jaar van verschijning: eerste druk: 1991 (als boek van de literaire reeks Blackbirds voor scholieren)
Uitgeverij: Wolters Noordhoff bv (uitgeverij Blackbirds)
Aantal pagina`s: 255
Opbouw boek: 9 hoofdstukken, informatie over de auteur en zijn werk, nawoord
The author
Ira Levin was born in New York City in 1929 and is a graduate of the "Horace Mann School." He lives in New York and has three sons. His first novel, the crime story "A kiss before dying" (1952) was an immediate public success. It was followed by "Rosemary's baby" (1964), a hair-raising fictitious account of modern deviltry and witchcraft. It was made into a film starring Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, and gave rise to a spate of imitations in print and on the screen. Levin's third novel "This perfect day" (1967) is a futuristic anti-utopia set in a computer controlled world. "The Stephord Wives" (1972) was another popular success. "The Boys from Brazil" has also found a wide reading public.
Summary of the book:
In Sao Paulo the men meet each other, and Mengele, which has the control there concerning. He’s explaining his plan to assassinate 94 men in 2.5 year, for this they would get diamonds. They were wiretapped by a man that calls himself Hunter. His real name is Barry Koehler, he had gone on his own, he is a student of Liebermann. Mengele knew it and he let Hunter assassinate. Unfortunately for Mengele, but the information had been already passed on to Liebermann. Liebermann doesn’t believe him and does some research in the newspapers. He goes to two widows of men who are assassinated. If he has been at both, he realised that the sons of both widows look exactly the same, also all those children have been adopted and have parents with exactly the same age. The children have been adopted from Brazil and coming from the adoption centre Rush-Gaddis-Adoption Agency where Frieda Maloney worked. She worked for Mengele and had to try to trace parents who were the same as the parents of Hitler were. She knew one name of the parents and that was the name Wheelock. Liebermann knew that Wheelock was the next on the list and tried to protect him. But Mengele also knew that Liebermann knew too much. They both went to Wheelock, but Mengele was there sooner than Liebermann. Mengele pretended to be Liebermann and Mengele assassinates Wheelock. When Liebermann walks in to the door Mengele pretends that he is Wheelock and shoots Liebermann 5 times in the back. Eventually Mengele is eaten by the dogs of Wheelock. The list of the Hitler children is dropped in the toilet, because Liebermann thinks that the children will never become a person like Hitler. But then one of the Hitler childs signs a man who stands on a stage and he gets all the attention of the people, just like in the Hitler movies.
Yakov Liebermann (main character)
The most of the book is written in his view. It wasn't difficult for me to sympathize with him. He is definitely a round character. For example, at the end of the book he doesn't want to kill little Hitler-boys because he doesn't want to be a child killer (like Dr. Mengele).
Dr. Mengele
Mengele is a nazi, and he got help from Hitler to clone him into little boys and now he's trying to give the boys the same situation as Hitler had. The fathers of the boys have to be killed at the age of sixty-five, because Hitler's daddy died at that age too. He doesn't show character development.
Other characters
Barry Koehler
Barry is the student who lets Yoskila tape the discussion in Sao Paulo and gave some of the information to Liebermann, before Dr. Mengele (himself) killed him.
Klaus von Palmen
Another student who was obsessed by the speech of Liebermann at one of his conferences. He did some research and in the middle of the book they became partners.
Rabbi Gorin
He is contrasted with Liebermann whose ally he is. Gorin's solution to the problem posed by the Hitlers and Mengeles of this world is to fight them with their own weapons. The opposition between Liebermann and Gorin, that of idealism versus realism, is a fundamental human problem which will probably remain unresolved as long as mankind continues to consist of free individuals.
THEMES
In this book is described, how the history could have looked like. The writer wrote the novel, in such a way, that it is very realistic. Using facts and the names, and/or characters, of people who have actually really existed, he created something like an alternative history. He made a change of history, with the facts of genetic engineering, of which people are really afraid to get used by criminal organizations. This technique, cloning humans, sounds like science fiction, but people who know a little about genetic engineering, know that it hasn't been done yet, but science is able to. People are also very afraid of dictatorial regimes. That's why a lot of people like this book.
REACTIES
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