Peter Englund is not quite like other historians. Instead of documenting what happened, he is concerned with how those involved experienced it. In “Onde netters drømer” he follows 39 people in various places around the world in November 1942, i.e. at the time when the war is about to tip over in the Allies’ favor – this time in 360 short chapters. Each of the 39 people is presented in a portrait photograph at the beginning of the book. Together with some absolutely brilliant and unique photographs from the period in question, the images contribute significantly to increasing the sense of closeness and reality in the narrative. STRONG WOMEN: The pictures contribute to the feeling of being told surprising stories in Peter Englund’s book. American women made up 65 percent of the workforce in the armaments industry in 1943. SMOKE BREAK: The 22-year-old transport pilot Shirley Slate in 1943 takes a breath of fresh air between battles. “At the same time somewhere else” In short paragraphs, Englund sets the literary binoculars at lightning speed. We get a glimpse of the individual before moving on to another destiny, another place on the globe. On Monday 2 November 1942, for example, the 22-year-old charioteer Keith Douglas drives a tank in the Egyptian city of al-Alamein. He wrote: At the same time, somewhere else, twelve-year-old Ursula Blomberg sits in an apartment in Shanghai, to which she and her family fled from Leipzig in 1939. That the then very cosmopolitan Shanghai was one of the safe harbors that accepted Jewish refugees without reservation , will be new to most. Englund twists and turns the perspectives to show that this world war was something else and more than what we thought. WRITING ABOUT THE BATTLE: Wagoner Keith Douglas’s memoir of the Western Desert campaign, “Alamein to Zem Zem” is a classic of British war literature. The soldier died during D-Day in 1944. Photo: CAPPELEN DAMM AUTHOR: Albert Camus wrote his most famous work, “The Plague” in November 1942 in occupied France. FASCIST: The only villain in Peter Englund’s story is called John Amery. The 30-year-old Briton was in Berlin in 1942, and was an obedient contributor to Nazi propaganda. Based on a true story “Everything is sourced, because the history I use is rich enough,” Englund writes in the foreword. With such a bold claim as a premise, the reader becomes a little extra interested in where Englund gets his stories from. Some of them Englund has met personally and spoken to. Of the written sources, he uses, as far as possible, so-called contemporary sources. In other words, documents that originate from the time he is writing about – in this case November 1942, and the time immediately afterwards. The advantage of this method is that those who wrote are unaware of how the war would develop – we get access to how they were thinking at this very moment. Because when and where did charioteer Keith Douglas write that being inside a tank was like being in a silent film? In the Swedish edition, the always very obliging Englund has included a thorough bibliography. The list is surprisingly not included in the Norwegian edition. This makes the Norwegian edition difficult to navigate. Nothing new from Norway There are no Norwegians or Swedes among the selected 39. Bearing in mind that the prisoner ship Danube left the quay just in November (the 26th) with 529 Norwegian Jews about table, there should be enough life stories here too, which Englund could have taken hold of. Perhaps part of Englund’s project is to show that the Second World War really was a world war, which took place on all continents? A bit in the same way that Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah with his novels from Zanzibar recently reminded us that the First World War also took place on the African continent. NEED AND ENJOYMENT: Peter Englund’s book shows the paradox of war. Death and misery somewhere, while someone finds happiness under an umbrella on a welcoming beach at the same time. Photo: Cappelen Damm False hairdresser in Treblinka Englund moves me most when he shows off the atypical. Like Lidija Ginzburg, both starving and researching (on Pushkin, Tolstoy and Proust) in besieged Leningrad in November 1942. Or that Allied naval guests were invited to experience a symphony orchestra playing in Arkhangelsk at the same time. Englund also takes us into the Treblinka concentration camp with a Jewish prisoner who survived by first claiming to be a hairdresser, then a dentist. These passages are absolutely terrible to read – but it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know. They are more of a reminder that this disaster was of such dimensions that they almost evade narration. It’s as if every word, every narrative entails a form of banalisation. Master Peter Englund is by no means alone in telling the story in this way. A sharp competitor is the American author and historian Erik Larson, who has written sparkling books about an American diplomatic family in Nazi Berlin, and about Winston Churchill and his family in the first years of the war. Larson makes it easier for himself with a much more limited gallery of people. Peter Englund writes about 39 individuals and manages to make me care about each one of them. It is a significant literary achievement. “Dreams of the Wicked” is a masterfully executed braided tale. Cappelen Damm states that the reference to the source due to an error has been omitted from the first edition, but that this will be corrected in the second edition. news reviews Title: “Onde netters drømmer” Author: Peter Englund Translator: Alexander Leborg Genre: Non-fiction Publisher: Cappelen Damm Pages: 448 Date: 9 January 2023 Hi! I read and review literature in news. Please also read my review of “Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck, “Details” by Ia Genberg, or Franz Kafka’s “The Process” translated by Jon Fosse.
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“Bad Night Dreams” by Peter Englund – Reviews and recommendations
