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    Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel
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    Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel
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    Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel
    Ebook365 pages4 hours

    Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel

    By Thaisa Frank

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    An occult Nazi program is threatened by a philosopher’s letter to a friend in this “stunning work, full of mystery and strange tenderness” (Dan Chaon).
     
    In the waning days of World War II, Nazi Germany is coming apart at the seams. Yet the death machine continues to churn. The Third Reich’s obsession with the astral plane has led to the formation of an underground compound of scribes—translators charged with answering letters addressed to concentration camp inmates who are most likely dead.
     
    Into this covert compound comes a letter written by eminent philosopher Martin Heidegger to his optometrist, a prisoner of Auschwitz. Goebbels himself has demanded a response. But the mere presence of Heidegger’s words—one simple letter in a place filled with letters—sparks a series of events that will ultimately threaten the safety of the entire compound.
     
    With this debut novel that is part thriller and part meditation on how the dead are remembered—and with threads of Heidegger’s philosophy woven throughout—Thaisa Frank deftly reconstructs the landscape of Nazi Germany in “a spellbinding, innovative, intellectually compelling tour-de-force” (Michelle Huneven).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 1, 2010
    ISBN9781582438641
    Unavailable
    Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel
    Author

    Thaisa Frank

    Thaisa Frank, author of three books of short fiction and a forthcoming novel, is a two-time PEN award winner, and contributing editor to The San Francisco Review. She has taught at San Francisco State, University of California at Berkeley, and currently teaches at the University of San Francisco.

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    Reviews for Heidegger's Glasses

    3.5/5

    57 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Really more like 3 1/2 stars. I thought the first half and the final pages were magnificent, but most of the second half felt oddly paced and off-key somehow.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the quirky premise but the macabre reality of the novel dampened my enthusiasm overall. Yet another book without quotation marks, the author does a better job than many others of making clear what is and what isn't dialogue, but it's still rather an affectation. As for the ending, I was severely disappointed that Elie and Lodenstein never found each other again, but the trunk full of Compound mementos on exhibit in a museum was a nice touch. Enjoyable but likely not a re-read.
    • 2/5
      vacation read #8: not sure what to think about this. I question the historicity. Seems literature and pop fiction has a lot to say about Nazis and the occult, but it appears that most of it is very poorly sourced. This is no exception, although the author does make (sort of) clear that this entire story is just a fiction she made up in her own little mind.

      Still wish it had more basis in fact. I've only been able to confirm what facts I already knew: Heidegger's existence, and the letters written by prisoner/victims right before they were gassed. The rest of it seems an entirely constructed story.
    • 4/5
      'Heidegger's Glasses' by Thaisa Frank is a book for those of you that love WWII novels - and those that don't. This is Ms Frank's first full length novel and she has done an amazing job! The characters are well developed and the plot is well thought out and written. There were times, in the story when the tension was palpable and times when I was blown away by the resilience of characters who could make good times even in the middle of hell. My favorite part was the 'letters from the dead' scattered throughout the book. They really added that extra punch to, and created the perfect atmosphere for, the story.
    • 3/5
      Whew! I was so happy when this book was finished! The only reason I gave it 3 stars is because I liked the ending. I think maybe the fact that these people had to live underground for so long and that I am slightly claustrophobic is why I had a hard time getting into this book. I will say that it was well written though.
    • 4/5
      Every once in a while a random book selection turns out to be a thought provoking gem. Heidegger's Glasses is one such book.Set in Germany, towards the end of WWII, an underground compound houses a number of Jewish scribes. The only reason why they've managed to avoid being transported to concentration camps or shot outright is because of their multi-language skills. They're kept in this compound to answer letters written by victims in concentration camps, most of whom had died by the time their letters were replied to. As Himmler dabbles in the occult, he believed that if the letters of the dead were answered, their spirits would be appeased and Germany will win the war. Elie has changed her last name and so her identity, which allows her to work within the Nazi Party in this compound, but also allows her to cloak herself in the resistance movement where she helps to rescue and smuggle out Jews. Lodenstein, her lover and Nazi officer commanding this compound is also part of this resistance movement. All of their efforts and their lives are now at risk because of an unexpected mission that has been given to them. Heidegger, a German philosopher has broken his glasses and has asked for a new one made for him by his old friend, Asher. Unbeknownst to him, Asher is in Auschwitz, and rather than have him search out his old friend and discover the dastardly secret gas chambers, Goebbles has instructed the scribes to respond to Heidegger's letter in the same manner in which Asher would have responded and to deliver his glasses together with the letter to him. Unfortunately nothing goes according to plan, and Elie's identity is compromised.There is nothing for it but for Lodenstein to visit Goebbels and try to cover up the mistake. This results in him being thrown into jail for a week and then sent off with Heidegger to Auschwitz to find Asher and his son. Asher has, in the meantime been pulled from hard labor, given regular food and clothes, and set in a lab to make glasses for the camp officers, so that when Heidegger arrived, he wouldn't realize his friend had been tortured and starved.What is striking is the mental anxieties that Asher goes through when he is first pulled off hard labor. He expects to be shot or sent to the gas chambers are every small bit of kindness received from the guards. From his window he looks out on the snow covered ground, stained pink from the blood of executed prisoners. Interspersed throughout the book are what appears to be short notes and letters from Holocaust victims, initially somewhat simple and innocuous but which gradually become darker and then painful towards the end. The letters help create a very moving platform on which the characters in the book are supported. As the letters progress from mere disquiet at the disappearance of people to stark terror and horror about death camps, so too do certain characters in this compound have to stare their own tragic pasts in the face or the killer within themselves.This is a book that will stay with you for a long time.
    • 5/5
      I found this to be a lovely and incredibly sad book. Given the subject matter, that can’t be much of a surprise, but “Heidegger’s Glasses” looks at a slightly different aspect of World War II. The focus is more (though not completely) on the people who survived the Holocaust…while living on the razor’s edge of safety.A Nazi officer sums up the constant fear of this small group of people living an unsure existence underground. “Every assurance of continuing could mean is just about to be shot.”Due to a superstitious element of the Nazi party, a group of translators is collected and sent into an underground world to translate and then answer letters to the dead. This world below the earth is nearly as implausible compared to normal human life as the world above. Below, there is a cobblestone street, a small house, a sky that changes from morning to night…all as part of a mine shaft. Above, there is mass murder, constant fear and deprivation, and inhuman treatment of entire populations.One of the main characters, Elie, is a part of both worlds. She is both incredibly strong and unbelievably fragile, able to externally adapt to both worlds, but not without constantly being wounded inside. . “Elie scanned without reading – her only purpose was to identify the language. She tried to ignore her sense of revulsion – never pausing to look at the name of the writer or what they’d written. Sometimes, when she was trying to fall asleep, she saw phrases from these letters – hurried, terrified lies, extolling the conditions in the camps. But when she scanned them quickly, she noticed nothing – except when she saw the enormous bag marked A, for Auschwitz. It was not only bigger than the other mailbags but seemed larger than anything this world could contain, as if it had fallen from another universe.”All of these characters as compelling – but Elie was the one that haunted me the most after finishing the book. Appropriately, the focus of so many books about this horrible war focus on the deaths and the losses. I don’t see as much written about those who survived the war intact in body, but certainly not in spirit. These people tried to maintain some semblance of normal life, either for their children or for their loved ones, or in a desperate attempt to maintain their sanity for when the war ended, if it ended. And all of them found different ways to survive, to try and keep their humanity intact.“The lemonade reminded Lodenstein of summer, and he wished he could slip back into a summer childhood, where the only evidence of war was trenches he built with his friends. At dinner, his mother had fits about his muddy shoes, and his father tried to convince him that deciphering codes was far more exciting than battle. But he couldn’t slip away into anything because the past three weeks felt ground into his body like glass.”The characters who lived to see the of the war are very different people than they were at the beginning. Too much that never should have happened; that human beings should never experience or do to one another has taken place.“Elie couldn’t stop staring at Asher’s face while he sat on the cobblestone street, staring at the pretend sky. It didn’t look like a real face, but grey skin stretched over bones, an assemblage of angles and hollows, a vehicle for exhaustion and starvation – but not a face. The skin stretched over it was taut. The flesh beneath it was gone. His eyes were the only thing that seemed alive. Yet she could see everything in that face, as if his entire life were etched in the lines. She could sense every gunshot he’d heard at Auschwitz, every moment he’d seen people die, every day he’d lived in terror.”These characters, and the plaintive cries of the letters they read and answer, cry out to be remembered. Remembered to those they love and lost, and remembered in order that their experiences are never replicated.“The conversation with the dead goes on forever…” And so should stories like these. So that we never forget, and so that while so many souls did not survive this time in our history, their experiences and words will.
    • 4/5
      Goebbels said, "If you tell a lie, tell a big lie." This novel is about a unit ostensibly created by Goebbels to assure anxious relatives and friends about the "relocations" of Jews, and to dispel rumors about the Final Solution. I don't know if this has a basis in fact, but it is plausible, although much of the novel is somewhat surreal. The unit, consisting of about 50 Jews known as "scribes" who were saved from the gas chamber because of their expertise in languages, is housed in a refurbished cave somewhere in the mountains. They are provided with letters to various deported victims, and must answer them posing as the victim. They spend much of their time playing games with each other, and inventing fantasies. The unit is run by Gerhardt, a sympathetic Nazi officer who lives above the cave with his girlfriend Elie. Gerhardt knows and loves each inmate. He sees the project as absurd; however, since it saves the scribes from death, his goal is to keep the unit intact until the end of the war. "Only Goebbels's willingness to continue a ridiculous scheme," kept the unit in existence.One day a letter from the philosopher Martin Heidegger to his optometrist Asher Englehardt, who had been sent to a camp, is delivered to the unit with instructions that it be answered by "a philosopher" who can "absolutely duplicate" what would have been Asher's reply. The reply along with the proper pair of eyeglasses he requested is to be delivered to Heidegger. The book is full of irony, as when Asher states to Heidegger, "Martin I hope you understand that your interest in man's awareness of mortality has a different kind of meaning in a place where just wearing the wrong pair of shoes can get you shot." It is also a thriller, in that there is constant tension as to whether the unit will be maintained until liberation arrives. And it is also the love story of Gerhardt and Elie.
    • 4/5
      How does one go about writing a review of a book that both intrigued them, and confused them? This is going to be awkward, I'm sure. The writing style of Thaisa Frank is fantastic,that is for sure. She really did a great job on her research and created a novel that is well worth the time to read. However, that being said, I was often confused by the happenings in the story. Does that mean it's not a good book? Absolutely not. I was one in high school, to always get confused on the history aspect of wars, and the concentration camps (perhaps that was why I always had D's in that class?), so I was interested in seeing if I could read about them in a fiction novel, maybe being written in a form I so love, I would understand them better. Boy, was I wrong! But, I still enjoyed reading the story. It is really philosophical and is truly full of deeper meaning. Frank creates this novel with deep emotion. She really gives a history lesson on life during the Holocaust and the camps that were set up, along with the letters written to loved ones or people of closeness to the author of the letters. It was very interesting to learn the things that Elie did during that awful era. There were times that I thought, wow. What would it have been like to have been Elie? I honestly don't think I could have survived that era in one piece or with my sanity still intact.The love story of the book was also interesting to me. Why? Well, during a time like that I just don't think that I would have found the time to have a love in my life. I would have been to busy worrying about what was happening all around me. And for it to be with some like Elie chose??? Hmmm...I really think that she could have chose someone else as her love interest but I suppose that the story would not have been at all the same. Again, I must say that Frank used wonderful research to create this fictional story of the actual Mr. Heidegger in Heidegger's Glasses,along with the letter to his optometrist. She made me feel both confused and intrigued, as I said above, because she really gripped me with her words and thoughts that she penned into this story, leaving me with a haunting vision of life in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Wow! I was confused, because I just can't come to terms with something as horrific as the Holocaust and the camps and the way people were treated. I mean, how can some one, even during a war, treat these people like that?! WOW!Do I recommend this book to everyone? No, I do not, if you solely read Christian novels. There is use of language, however, knowing that before going into the story made it easier for me to read, so if you have a problem with language in books, please, this book would not be for you. I recommend this book ONLY if you want to learn more about a difficult place in history. I recommend it ONLY if you are interested in reading things about the Holocaust and the concentration camps.I recommend it ONLY if you have an open heart to understand more about this subject. Do I recommend it with high praises? Oh yea. Frank did a fantastic job at creating an intriguing, gripping, mysterious 4 star novel. Well done, Thaisa!
    • 3/5
      This review also posted on my blog.

      I really enjoy reading stories about the Holocaust and about the people who have lived through it. I suppose that in a way, it helps me to gain perspective in my own life, and reminds me that there is goodness to be found in everything. The suffering of the Jewish people during WWII was immense, yet they continue to hope and live. That means something to me.

      Heidegger's Glasses takes a different path, a surreal and philosophical and almost mystical one, and is a very different, but no less moving or beautiful story, because of it. We are told in the beginning that the leaders of the Reich were believers in the occult, and felt that winning the war hinged on answering letters to the dead. To do that, the Compound was formed underground, and multi-lingual Jews were placed there as Scribes to answer the dead's letters. When a letter comes in from a well-known person close to the Reich to a close friend who is currently in Auschwitz, the order comes down to answer the letter, even though the recipient is still alive -- the Final Solution must be kept secret, so the letter must not come from Auschwitz.

      This throws a huge wrench in the lives of the Scribes, and the people assigned to run the Compound. Elie Schacten is close to the Reich, and has the ability to move freely throughout Germany as few do, and uses this freedom to help people as she can. Gerhardt Lodenstein the Oberst, is a good-hearted man who finds safety for the Compound in flying under the radar. Stumpf, the former-Oberst of the Compound is a believer in the occult and takes the letter writing to the dead very seriously, but is a bit of a fool, and so tends to bungle everything he touches. The letter is written, delivered... and goes very badly wrong.

      I think that what I enjoyed most about this book is that we get to see the war and the Reich from people inside it that hate it. They don't believe and they live in fear and uncertainty that they will be found out. The Compound is a mostly-safe haven for the Scribes under Lodenstein, and a temporary refuge for Jews in hiding, but after Heidegger's letter fiasco, you can cut the tension with a knife. They aren't sure if the Reich will come crashing down on their heads, or if they've forgotten, or if they don't care... there are a million ifs, but life must go on and there's very little that can be done either way. I felt like I was there, and was worried for this group of people who had lost nearly everything already.

      I really enjoyed the writing in this book. It felt simple, almost surreal without quotation marks for the dialogue. The prose was straightforward, but contained some beautiful quotes that I wish I'd have marked. The sections were very short, for the most part, and separated by the letters that the Scribes were answering. These letters told the story of the "outside world" almost as well as any full book would have done, so that by the end, we can see the danger that the Scribes have managed to avoid, mostly, but they still have reason to fear. There were some funny sections in the book as well, which surprised me, since I didn't expect it at all in a novel about Nazi Germany. This helped the surreal feeling as well, but also provided the story with a kind of false-lightness above the seriousness and fear.

      The ending was a little abrupt for me. The time shift and the unresolved whereabouts of one of the characters was a bit sudden and and disappointing. I'd hoped for this character to find what they were searching for and to find happiness, so the shift to an entirely new character jarred a little bit. But otherwise, I really enjoyed the story, and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a WWII story scene through a different lens.