- Hardcover: 144 pages
- Publisher: University of Chicago Press (7 Jun 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0226707342
- ISBN-13: 978-0226707341
- Product Dimensions: 2 x 1.4 x 0.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,756,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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"Sensational.... Not quite fifty years after its first publication this absolutely unforgettable work has been saved from obscurity." - Westdeutsche Zeitung; "Without question one of the most important prose documents of the war. It is tempered, hardened, mercilessly precise, as if written with a dagger." - Hamburger Anzeiger; "An exceptional book.... The horror of war has rarely been made so clear." - Sudwest Presse"
Product Description
It is 1943. A German submarine commander and an American pilot are stranded on a rubber life raft, floating alone in the middle of the ocean, with nothing between them but a bottle of whiskey, some cigarettes, a few chocolate bars, and a pack of chewing gum. Both sit, hoping to be rescued, but there is no hope in sight. The stage is thus set for this hypnotic existentialist parable, a rediscovered classic in the literature of World War II. In a terse, almost clinically exact style, Nothing in Sight distills the brutal essence of what it is to die alone. Much more than a story of war, this short novel presents the memories, dreams, and hallucinations of two soldiers as they drift toward death. With nothing in sight on the horizon, Jens Rehn directs our view inward, into the minds of both men as they question the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the possibility of enduring human relationships. As the drama unfolds, each man recalls fragments of his past through the delirium of thirst and pain. The American soldier, his arm severed, dies first of gangrene. The German dies in agony a week later. Their life raft sinks into the vastness of the ocean. Reissued two years ago-in-Germany, Nothing in Sight was hailed by critics there as a singular achievement. The work is presented here in a crystalline English translation for the first time, given new life for generations of readers to come.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Two on a Raft
8 May 2005
Format:Hardcover
Kenneth J. Northcott provides a brilliant translation in which you feel the sun's heat and the sizzling flesh through the words.Scott Denham places the novel in the long history of German war novels, reaching back to Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Junger, whose novels of the 1920s and 1930s are still read today, and also the poet Walter Flex, whose sentimental approach in his 1917 romance Wanderer Between Two Worlds was wildly popular at the time in which Rehn was writing. Denham also shows us how Rehn is best thought of in terms of the existential novel popular in the 1950s, particularly the "Waterworld" of Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, and the dialogue based works of Samuel Beckett, particularly those like GODOT with very limited casts of characters.
The book is no easy read and Rehn's descriptions of the two men's travails still packs a punch. You wince every time one tries to take a drink of whiskey and their thirst and emaciation prevents them from enjoying even these few last drinks. They think about the women they loved and the men and women who let them down. In a way it is perhaps a pacifist book, showing that despite being on different sides in the war, both of the men are pretty much the same under the skin (literally). I wonder how Rehn picked up so much information about the private lives of American citizens. He does Texas to a T!
Nothing in Rehn's career approached the success of this, his first novel, or so Denman announces, although this is the first of a loosely-linked trilogy of war novels. I would very much like to see the other books in this series. It's a shame Rehn isn't around today to enjoy knowing that his work is still being appreciated a good fifty years after its first European publication.
I thought of the John Boorman film, Hell in the Pacific, while reading this book. Wonder if Boorman was familiar with this book when composing his fable of the two men (Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune) trying to destroy each other even though they are the only ones left fighting World War II!
The book is no easy read and Rehn's descriptions of the two men's travails still packs a punch. You wince every time one tries to take a drink of whiskey and their thirst and emaciation prevents them from enjoying even these few last drinks. They think about the women they loved and the men and women who let them down. In a way it is perhaps a pacifist book, showing that despite being on different sides in the war, both of the men are pretty much the same under the skin (literally). I wonder how Rehn picked up so much information about the private lives of American citizens. He does Texas to a T!
Nothing in Rehn's career approached the success of this, his first novel, or so Denman announces, although this is the first of a loosely-linked trilogy of war novels. I would very much like to see the other books in this series. It's a shame Rehn isn't around today to enjoy knowing that his work is still being appreciated a good fifty years after its first European publication.
I thought of the John Boorman film, Hell in the Pacific, while reading this book. Wonder if Boorman was familiar with this book when composing his fable of the two men (Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune) trying to destroy each other even though they are the only ones left fighting World War II!
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