After Dachau

First of all I have to clarify that Stephen was possibly the one who recommended The City of Ember, or he at least had a hand in the recommendation, neither of us can remember. So in any case, thanks to Anji and Stephen for recommending and lending their jointly owned books.

Moving on, the next book on my list is After Dachau by Daniel Quinn, which was recommended to me by Jenny as we browsed at Barnes and Noble one afternoon mostly because they didn’t have a copy of Ishmael, which I still plan to read one of these days. I’m going to spoil the heck out of it, as usual, so normal spoiler warnings apply. I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to anyone, but if you’re going to read it don’t go past the spoiler warnings below as there are some pretty good surprises involved.

After Dachau takes place around the year 2000 A. D. A wealthy young man named Jason Tull, who is involved in an organization that investigates cases of reincarnation, meets a young woman named Mallory Hastings, who appears to have reverted to a previous life as a woman named Gloria MacArthur following a car accident. Jason gets to know Gloria to try and understand the mystery of her past. Spoilers!

When he learns that Gloria was African American he finally understand what is going on. A. D. in Jason’s time means After Dachau. The Nazis won World War II, after Hitler won the arms race, and exterminated not only all Jewish people, but all non-Aryans. Gloria was one of the last two in New York before she and her partner took their own lives to avoid being found over two thousand years before. Jason begins a quest to learn more about Gloria’s world, looking for the illegal books published before the war.

Jason’s activities are noticed by a family friend who is also a government agent. He kidnaps Jason and takes him to a remote location until he acknowledges three words, “No one cares.” Jason is not deterred and returns to New York to open a gallery to display non-Aryan art with Gloria, who is now his fiancé.

After Dachau is exactly the sort of book that I should love, it’s a reincarnation story about the Holocaust that takes place in a sort of dystopian world. When I was about halfway through I was ecstatic and planning on recommending it to everyone I knew and buying copies for everyone in my family (which is what I did after reading Life of Pi). Once I’d finished I only gave it to Clay, because I had to know if he agreed with me (he did). The book has some wonderful elements, the reincarnation stories at the beginning are fascinating and the scene when Jason asks a group of schoolgirls to explain the Holocaust to Gloria is perfect, but the book begins to go down hill when Jason is kidnapped. First of all, if no one cares then why on earth would there be a need to kidnap Jason to convince him that no one cares. That would indicate that someone must care but if the government, for example, does care, then why are they not shutting down the gallery? However, having it end with Jason planning to publish Anne Frank’s diary truly killed it for me. It took a smart commentary on the nature of history and reduced it to something a child could have written.

It’s a very short book so it doesn’t take long to get through and it might be worth reading for the excellent first half. I don’t really think anyone should be discouraged from reading a book they are interested in by someone else’s opinion. But I certainly won’t be clamoring for everyone I know to read it like I am with most everything else I read.