Monday, February 1, 2016

CRIME FICTION SET IN NAZI GERMANY

I discovered in January 2016 a wonderfully gifted writer, Phillip Kerr. He's the author of the Bernie Gunther crime fiction novels set in Nazi Germany around  the time of the world wars.
Bernie sounds sarcastic when he's merely stating facts; and the sarcastic tone makes the books so readable! I am currently enjoying one of these fast-paced books (If the dead rise not)as the tone of Bernie kept me going. I enjoyed this novel even as I  flinched at the atrocious thinking & behaviour of the Nazis. 

 It would be great if someone who writes exactly like  Kerr were to write about the crime in today's India. especially that perpetrated by the politicians and the government bureaucrats.   The crimes occurring in Indian villages, especially against Dalits by the upper castes  should be written, until the entire world is aware of these atrocious crimes and shames India into changing.

I had made the same comment about Stuart M Kaminsky writing books about Indian crime fiction; In this same vein, I believe that a TV serial such as The wire should be made about Indian crime as the personality & behaviour of the characters, especially the criminals and their women-folk is exactly like that of folks in India.

A few Indian and western authors have written about crime in India; but for me, there is something missing. I think, that Kerr, would hit the nail on the head if he writes about Indian criminals. I believe that his book would be true, yet readable.

Maybe, because I am Indian, Indian crime is too close to me for comfort ...  even if Kerr himself were to write Indian crime fiction, I may not enjoy.
 Kerr has written about the past in the Bernie Gunther novels... ergo, I can enjoy the novels without feeling 'too' sad, as I know that these atrocities are not happening now and knowing that people's  suffering is in the past and not current. However if novels about  current crimes in India were written, I will NOT have the same reading pleasure; The knowledge that  the crimes are real, the knowledge that the crimes are happening even as I am reading the book and the terrible awareness that people are suffering even as I am reading the book, will kill any book-reading-pleasure I experience!

The article in yesterday's Deccan Herald newspaper which left me sleepless and seething with impotent rage & triggered these thoughts about Kerr writing about Indian crime is http://www.deccanherald.com/content/526312/drunk-youths-kill-minor-gang.html

 If you would like to read Phillip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels, here is the list.

March Violets  1989
The pale criminal 1990
A German Requiem 1991
(the above three were published in one volume called Berlin Noir)

The one from the other 2006
A quiet flame 2008
If the dead rise not, 2009
Field Gray 2010
Prague Fatale 2011
A man without breath 2013
The lady from Zagreb 2015
The other side of silence 2016
Prussian Blue-2017

I am looking forward to an exciting-next-few-months-of-Bernie-Gunther-books-of-reading, to pass the winter and spring days of 2016.

Phillip Kerr has written other books too including some for children.

Pavel Kohout: A widow killer. (1998).another thriller set in Prague under  Nazi rule.
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