THE TIME OF LIGHT
by Gunnar Kopperud & translated by Tiina Nunnally
A brooding first novel, the work of a German-born Norwegian journalist, that explores the experience of WWII through the (literal, extended) confession of Markus, a former Nazi soldier captured during the siege of Stalingrad, who has remained in Russia following his release. Kopperud contrasts Markus's guilty memories of his own combat experiences to those of two other soldiers—the idealistic, gung-ho Dieter and the gentle, musically inclined Manfred (opposed halves of the German soul?)—and then juxtaposes their stories against those of three German girls who are their homefront counterparts. Echoes of Erich Maria Remarque's once-famous Three Comrades and (to a lesser extent) André Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just abound, in an overly discursive, unfortunately undramatic fiction: it tells us little more than that war is hell, and takes a hell of a long time saying so.