When I began
News from Berlin I expected something along the lines of Alan Furst (whom I’ve
enjoyed), but it turned out to be something slightly different and a bit
richer, too. I read this book because de Kat participated in the Jaipur
Literature Festival. I’m glad I did.
Unlike Furst,
who follows a central character through the perils of time immediately before
and at the beginning of the Second World War, in this novel de Kat focuses on a
family. The father is a Dutch diplomat in Switzerland, the wife volunteers at a
hospital in London, and their adult daughter is married to a member of the
German Foreign Ministry. The son-in-law is not a Nazi; in fact, he’s
unsympathetic to the Nazi regime and certainly watched by the Gestapo. The novel begins in
early June 1941. The war has begun. France fell quickly; Britain just barely
survived. The U.S. remains officially on the sidelines while Hitler and Stalin
have a non-aggression pact. For the family, life seems balanced if tenuous. But
then the daughter passes on a secret to her father about a major German action
coming soon. The knowledge becomes like an infectious disease passed
(intentionally) from daughter to father to mother, endangering the thin tissue
of each receiver’s existence and relationships without reducing (as hoped) the
burden on the person passing on the moral and practical demands that the secret requires of them.
De Kat’s focus,
however, is more than espionage and the moral dilemmas of wartime. It also focuses
on the members of the family, their relationships with each other and those closest to them. The delicate balance of relationships changes as each comes into
contact with the other. New realities reveal themselves and confound the
characters perhaps as much as their burdensome secret. History in the family,
as in life, intrudes and shapes the present in ways that the characters can’t
escape and can only vaguely comprehend.
Writers like
Graham Greene, Eric Amber (I’m now reading another Ambler), and Alan Furst have
written a great deal set in this time period. While titanic military and
political forces met in epic struggles, individuals and families—at least those
lucky enough to live—continue to try to live and maintain a semblance of
ordinary life when the time is not ordinary at all. To me, that's what makes
this period so fruitful for novelists and historians (such as John Lukacs) and
why I’m so drawn to it. Now I add Otto de Kat to the honor role of writers who
explore this dark and frightening time not so long ago.
