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Title: Shadow Without a Name by Ignacio Padilla, Peter Bush, Anne McLean ISBN: 0-312-42270-9 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.58 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: It holds your breath until the end
Comment: Life is an ongoing, premeditated chess game and those who live life move like pawns on the chessboard. The chess game that took place in a train at the dawn of World War I in Ignacio Padilla's book, Shadow Without A Name, irreparably changed the lives of at least four men whose identities became warped even after death. The novel cleverly evokes the question of identity and selfhood against the historical backdrop of the darkest period of the twentieth century, as men appropriated names of each other, shielded off past memories and adopted new identities in the hope of a changed, better destiny. It was a time in which the truth became shrouded by lies and the lies adopted as truth.
Four men contribute to the narrative, which, in an overlapping interval of time, recounted the sequence of events that spanned decades as well as continents following the chess game in 1916, between Viktor Kretzschmar and Thadeus Dreyer.
In 1957, in Buenos Aires, Franz Kretzschmar reminisced his father, Viktor Kretzschmar, who faced Thadeus Dreyer on a chessboard for a life-and-death game. The winner would take Kretzschmar's identity as a railway signalman in Salzburg and the loser would head to the Austro-Hungarian eastern front, which promised death. When Franz's father (the true and only Thadeus Dreyer whose name had been appropriated and incarnated throughout the book) won the game, little did he know the exchange of documents would lend him a warped identity though he saw the deadly wager as a promise of immortality. However he despised trains, Franz's father approached the job with unbounded enthusiasm and not the slightest of his despondency betrayed his imposture until he was found guilty of premeditating a train accident near Salzburg. He wasted away in a sanatorium upon release from jail, rendered unable to recognize his son, let alone Franz's revengeful efforts to restore his father's peace of mind.
Richard Schley was a seminarist falsely elevated to priesthood who attended to near-death soldiers and gave vespers in 1918. Schley met his childhood friend Jacob Efrussi who changed his name to Thadeus Dreyer, in the time of the pandemonium caused by the Balkans on the Austrian front in 1918. Efrussi (or Dreyer), who had stolen so many names and lived under so many identities, persisted in denying his real name. Another name swap occurred as Efussi agreed to stake his fate on a chess game with Richard Schley, who found Efrussi in the midst of ravages and brought him home from the front.
Alikoshka Goliadkin was an orderly of General Thadeus Dreyer during his rise in the Nazi reign. This man was the key to unveil the clandestine relationships between Franz Kretzschmar, Adolf Eichmann and Dreyer. At the time, Dreyer supervised the training of a small legion of impostors (doubles) who would occasionally replace senior party officials or served as decoys in public appearances considered high-risk. Goliadkin was the only man who knew the where about of Dreyer and his impostor team (which was reported to vanish without a trace) when the project fell out of favor with the Nazi.
Daniel Sanderson, one of the three heirs of Baron Woyzec Blok-Cissewsky who left an encrypted code in a chess manual that would resolve the whole mystery about the aforementioned men. The baron, took residence in Poland during his late years, turned out to be yet another incarnation of Thadeus Dreyer. The seemingly impregnable encrypted code embedded the secrets of the many failed attempts by Nazi officers opposed to Hitler's policies to destroy the regime from within. As Sanderson investigated the baron's connection with Eichmann, he became alert at the fact that a fourth heir who resided in a Frankfurt sanatorium existed!
This book presents a story within stories, twisted and shrouded. At each turn of a page, at each switch of narrator, the book challenges readers with the question: is the man who he says he is? I have to flip back and forth to make sure I do not have the slightest confusion of who is who, though it is sometimes inevitable to fall into the trap of which who I think the man is. Once I get used to all the name swap and appropriation, and the underlying connection or disconnection of all the Dreyer incarnations, the book is a tantalizing, suspenseful, mesmerizing read. The constant changes of identities do not lose the way. It is cleverly written, with finesse and attention to details. It holds your breath to the end. 5.0 stars.
Rating: 5
Summary: Complex and Riveting
Comment: Even though I love magical realism and novels set in Latin America, I was so happy to find that this debut novel by Mexican author, Ignacio Padilla was woven around a very different sort of story.
SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME is a spellbinding, hypnotic novel that takes place in various locales between World War I and World War II. The book is convoluted, labyrinthine and it's sometimes difficult to follow (it gets more and more convoluted and labyrinthine as the plot progresses). It's woven around mistaken identities and concerns the capture and subsequent execution of Nazi War criminal, Adolf Eichmann.
Although SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME is a relatively short book, it is told in five sections (and to Padilla's credit, none of them seem "too short;" he gives us plenty of information to work with). The book opens in Buenos Aires in 1997 as Franz Kretzschmar, a German refugee, relates the story of how his father switched identities with another man in 1914. Kretzschmar (the father) eventually goes to prison for causing a train derailment in which he hoped to kill Thadeus Dreyer, the man whose identity he assumed. Or did he?
Things get more complicated in the second section of the book when we discover that Kretzschmar wasn't really Kretzschmar at all...or was he?
Padilla expands his story of switched identities in the third and fourth sections until we're really not sure who is who and what is what. The fourth narrator is an English novelist named Daniel Sanderson who's writing in 1989. Sanderson gives us clues to this riddle of switched identities as he discloses the true nature of the "Amphitryon Project" (this was the name given to a Nazi project developed during the war and consisted of ensuring that every high-ranking official had a "double" in order to protect his life).
The fifth section is narrated by Padilla, himself, and to me, at least, seems to suggest that the man tried and executed as Adolf Eichmann wasn't really Eichmann, himself. But if he wasn't Eichmann, then who was he? And who was Kretzschmar? And Dreyer?
SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME contains a plot that can be difficult to follow at times, but any reader who takes the time to savor this sophisticated and intelligent book will be well rewarded. Padilla writes wonderful prose that is just perfect for this novel. It's spare and lean and intelligent. Even though the book is relatively short, it still manages to be convoluted, dense and packed with mystery. In the hands of a less skilled writer, all these switched identities could have so easily slipped into melodrama or farce, but Padilla never even comes close to that. The book is open-ended and nothing is really "wrapped up neatly," so if you need a neat and tidy ending in your fiction, I would advise you to avoid this book. If, however, you're looking for something different, something dark, something very intelligent and sophisticated, you can't do much better than SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME. This is really literary fiction at its finest.
Rating: 3
Summary: Intriguing concept but mixed execution
Comment: At first, I was gripped by the idea behind the book -- exchanged identities, fate (or lack of it), being -- but I can't really give "Shadow without a name" a positive review. The novel in the end is too schematic. At the same time, Padilla's reflections on his chosen themes are too abstract, something which couldn't have been helped by a very indifferent translation, and don't come to life. This is a novel, after all, and not an essay. Ultimately unsuccessful.
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Title: Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee ISBN: 0670031305 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 09 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: The Winter Queen : A Novel by BORIS AKUNIN, ANDREW BROMFIELD ISBN: 1400060494 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Iceland's Bell by Halldor Laxness, Philip Roughton, Adam Haslett ISBN: 1400034256 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Antipodes by Ignacio Padilla, Alistair Reid ISBN: 0374105332 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: My Life As a Fake by Peter Carey ISBN: 0375414983 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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