PositiveThe Observer (UK)As he learns to be a local... Kuper can seem a little too pleased with himself ... Nonetheless, Kuper is a clear-eyed observer of the history that is happening all around him.
Eric Vuillard, Trans. by, Mark Polizzotti
PositiveThe Observer\"... Vuillard demonstrates that the history of Germany during the 1930s is not quite as clear-cut as we often believe it to be ... Vuillard tells his version of the story with the delicate craftmanship of a miniaturist ... Vuillard has written a magnificently entertaining account that manages to capture the wild and uneven emotional climate of the 1930s and speaks too to our own era of liars, demagogues and politics as farce, which, as Vuillard deftly shows us, can slide all too quickly into tragedy.\
Joan DeJean
PositiveThe Financial TimesOccasionally DeJean realizes that she is stretching the reader’s credulity with so much bad behaviour on all sides—ranging from insurance fraud and identity theft to sending children to be murdered—so, like any decent lawyer, she dives back into her documentation to produce evidence that all of this is real. The result is a convincing recreation of a feverish period in French history when lying and treachery were the most useful and acceptable tactics in the art of social climbing ... DeJean guides the reader sure-footedly through the labyrinth of financial and family law, low and high politicking and general skulduggery that characterised the era. Her storytelling skills, however, are less certain. Most notably, the narrative too often veers from one timeframe to another, leaving the reader disoriented, confused or frustrated. For all that, DeJean has written a fascinating and original book whose central importance is to have captured the turmoil, confusion and sometimes sheer wickedness that accompanied the formation of early modern capitalism.
