Rating: 
Summary: Fast-paced detective story explores German guilt
Review: The novel takes place at ground zero of the end of the European war-the gutted Reichstag building, Hitler's bunker and the Brandenburg Gate. This Berlin is a rubble-strewn wasteland riddled with drunken Russian and American occupations troops, many scavenging for souvenirs and female companionship. More destitute refugees pour in everyday. In the middle of this maelstrom, an American reporter for Collier's Magazine--Jewish--arrives. He lived (and loved) in Berlin before the war, leaving the city when he still could, and leaving behind the woman he loved. He returns determined to see if she has still survived.It is next to impossible to find anything sensible written about what Germans could have done once they learned about the Nazis' campaign to rid Europe of all Jews. Most authors on this subject have sharp ideological axes to grind, and hector the reader on how heroic they would have been in similar circumstances-failing only to mention that they would also be dead. Kanon takes many stabs at this volatile subject from the point of view of a number of the German and a few Jewish survivors. Unlike lofty modern moralists, the narratives of the inhabitants describe their individual situations which are as varied as their fallible characters. One wonder of this nuanced work is that-just as in real life-only one of Kanon's characters can make a solidly convincing case for innocence or guilt--an attractive Jewish Greifer ("nabber") who was forced by the Nazis to seek out and turn in Jews still hiding in the City. In this soot-laden atmosphere of besotted soldiers still firing randomly into skulking civilians, and where death from starvation is an ongoing routine, the reporter stumbles on a puzzling murder of an American corporal. It is a rare moment when the sins of the past surface too explicitly to prevent this fast-paced detective story from seizing the reader's imagination, and running with it to an imaginative and satisfying climax. As someone who lived in Berlin in 1945-46, the scenes of devastation, of the human misery and the brutal arrogance of the Soviet occupation ring as true as anything I've seen or read. The story is filled with a cast of interesting and some hateful characters, many well-developed. The story is never plot-dictated, although the cleverness and daring of the hero occasionally verges on the unlikely. Nevertheless, a rousing tale with a complicated but finally deeply satisfying love story.
Rating: 
Summary: Not sure about this one
Review: This could have been a great novel. The setting is interesting and fresh. The execution, however, is so heavy-handed and cliched. All of the characters are stock, one-dimensional stereotypes. The dialog is particularly tedious, with every character sounding the same, speaking in tired old chestnuts and chattering about the plot. As well, much of the dialog is repetitive, with the characters saying the same thing multiple times. The book really begins to fall apart in the second half. Many of the scenes are nothing more than characters recapping the increasingly convoluted plot. And just to make sure you don't miss the point, the hypocrisy of certain characters is driven home over and over again. By the end of the book, the uninteresting plot has become so twisted and convoluted that the central character has to recap the twists and turns for another character in the penultimate chapter. The only interesting element of this book is "the greifer" subplot. That, however, seems almost entirely distilled from Peter Wyden's excellent biography "Stella," about a real greifer, so that it's hardly original or noteworthy. Some of the "catcher" scenes in Kanon's novel come straight out of Wyden's book.
Rating:
Summary: The Good German
Review: This is a wonderful novel that takes place in post World War II. The author does a wonderful job of maipulating many different plots into one excellent story. From the finding of an American soldier's body in Potsdam, to the romantic relationship between an American journalist with a married German women, the novel jumps from plot to plot and finally comes together in the end. The novel also does a marvelous job of describing the very troubled city of post war Berlin. The city has been carved up among the allied powers and there is friction between them. Women and children are raped by Russians and are forced to sell everything they have or trade cigerettes in order to just survive. Overall I was very pleased with this novel which kep me captivated and also taught me alot at the same time.
Rating:
Summary: Has it all, a thriller which is also a serious novel.
Review: Unlike so many other thrillers, this is a subtle and thought-provoking novel, a search for moral truth within a mystery and a love story. Creating fully developed main characters, filled with the good intentions and personal failings that make us all human, Kanon portrays the ethical dilemmas of the occupying forces in a devastated Berlin, just as the Potsdam Conference begins. The Good German, an ironic title, explores the practice of American policymakers of "sanitizing" the Nazi connections of German scientists so that they may be spirited into the U.S. for work on the atomic bomb. By transforming them into "good Germans," as opposed to the "bad Germans" who will face war crimes trials, the American "good guys" reveal themselves to be as morally compromised, perhaps, as the German scientists, willing to stop at nothing, including murder, in order to keep these men from falling into the hands of the Soviets. Kanon's eye for the telling detail is unerring. To fix the scope of the devastation, he remarks: "Buildings, like soldiers, were expected casualties of war. But the trees were gone too, all of them...The dense forest of the Tiergarten, all the winding paths...burned down to a vast open field littered with dark charcoal stumps." He refers to those Jews who tried to delay their fates in the only way open to them as "U-boats," hungry people who walked anonymously around the city all day, every day, so that they could not be identified by "friends," sometimes captured and deported when they took their worn out shoes to be repaired. Nazi big shots are "golden pheasants." The Russians are said to "pack up the power plants and anything shiny and hope for the best," while the Americans searching for scientists were doing "patriotic looting." The several subplots--the search for Emil Brandt, the love story of Jake and Lena, the conflict between war crimes investigators and the State Department, in conjunction with U.S. industry, and the difficulties of sharing power with the brutal Russians--are smoothly integrated into a thoroughly engrossing narrative, which, in combination with the unique characters, allow the reader to keep track of what's going on and stay involved till the end. I cannot attest to the accuracy of the history, but I came away from the novel with vivid images of the level of devastation in Berlin and a new appreciation of the difficulties faced by occupying forces.
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