If you’re thinking an approach as subtle and dramatic as The Book Thief, then get ready to be disappointed because The Nazi and The Barber won’t give you a voice that holds back words painting images of mass murder, sex and violence of the Holocaust.
Written by Edgar Hilsenrath, The Nazi and the Barber takes you inside the lives of Max Schulz and Itzig Filkenstein: two men born and raised in Germany who grew up to be bestfriends and then… (this is where I leave things off with ellipsis so as not to spoil the entire plot).
This is a grotesque book written from the point of view of a man, who was a killer, who slaughtered thousands of Jews without batting an eyelash. This is told by someone you are supposed to hate but in the course of reading his story, you fall into a quandary of whether you condemn him or sympathize with him.
You will need to toughen up as you flip through one page to the other.
You turn each page and you cringe because there is too much bloodshed, too much confusion that you get lost in the words which describe dead husbands, homeless wives and war-torn cities.
Originally written in German, the style of writing in this one is disturbing to those who are used to traditional, polished, structured, no-repetition style of prose. But this disturbance contributes to the overall mood that this book sets upon its reader(s). It is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, to shake your inner peace, to make you question people’s actions and find the reasons behind such actions.
What you read in other books describing Hitler and his men were brought to a more detailed and more personal platform in The Nazi and the Barber. And this is why as a work of fiction, this book is a strong, convincing material that gives readers a closer look of what transpired in the years that the Nazi regime ruled.
It takes a certain level of maturity to understand this one.
Don’t expect a happy ending.
Expect to ask a lot of questions even before you reach Book 3.
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