Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
If you're gonna read one book, read this..., 4 Aug 2003
I bought this book to read on a train journey home a few years ago. The journey lasted about an hour and a half, but I finally put the book down after reading the final word of the final page at 4am the next morning. Apart from showing my ticket to the conductor I don't think I talked to anyone in between. I was hooked. I even ignored the pretty brunette sat opposite me. Set in 1964, with Hitler having won the war and ruling over a Greater German Reich, a German policeman investigates a supposedly routine death and ends up uncovering a secret that some people will go to any length to protect. A great read that will leave an impact on you years after your first read.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
a great read as well as thought provoking, 7 Mar 1999
By A Customer
Fatherland is a cracking good yarn, a highly readable story of political intrigue and personal secrets. The plot moves swiftly and intelligently, building to an ending which is both intriguing and awesomely plausible. Above all, Harris draws a fascinating and all too believable picture of a Europe reshaped and defined by German victory at the end of World War II, a vision which not only intrigues and reminds one that history could have been very different, but also reinforces the view that history is written by the winning side. While not great literature by any means, this is a thought provoking book, and seriously recommended for its readability.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
Absolutely Fantastic, 11 Mar 2001
Fatherland is like a blueprint on how to write the perfect novel - it's well-written, commercial, thought-provoking and resonated in my mind long after I'd finished it, and the fact that so much of the documentation is real is frightening. I've had three novels published and recently I've found it incredibly difficult to find books that I can't criticise - Fatherland is one of them. I couldn't put it down. The hero, March, is such a well-rounded character that he just won't leave my mind, I keep thinking about him and wanting to go back to the book and re-read parts. Harris's skill as a writer is masterly, the book is fabulously crafted and yet seems effortless: taut prose with not a word wasted, descriptions of Berlin woven into the (realistic) dialogue, suspense, conflict, believable characters with interesting human flaws, and a finale that leaves you kicking yourself that you didn't spot certain things along the way. The reviewers who have been critical of the ending must have no imagination - a novelist who has the guts to leave a little to the reader is paying them the greatest compliment - if Robert Harris had spelled it all out in words of one syllable as some people seem to have wanted him to, it would have cheapened the experience. This book is thrilling - READ IT! I'm off to hunt for Archangel and Enigma now, hope they're as good as this one.
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