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the complete review - fiction

La part de l'autre

by
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

[an overview of the reviews and critical reactions]

general information | review summaries | review and reception notes | links | about the author

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Why we haven't reviewed it yet:
Have had a copy for years, and the idea sounds intriguing but the lukewarm reviews and the commitment (500 pages) have kept us away


Chances that we will review it:
Fairly slim, but we might get to it

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  From the Reviews:

• "This is not the first time that Mr Schmitt has tried to fill in the blanks left by orthodox versions of history. Here, though, the device seems forced. Caught up in Hitler's particular psychology, Mr Schmitt fails to engage satisfactorily with the question of the nature of evil. Only one character identifies the difference between "ordinary" evil and the evil of a fanatical dictator, capable of killing millions. Potentially interesting ideas -- for instance that Hitler became an anti-Semite only out of political opportunism -- are introduced tentatively, under the cover of novelistic licence." - The Economist
  
  
• "Die fiktive Hitler-Figur wird durch die Realität der historischen Figur komplett überlagert und gerät zur artifiziellen Hypostasierung; die Monstrosität des echten Hitler lässt sich schlechterdings nicht relativieren, was eben auch ein rezeptionelles Problem der Zumutbarkeit ist. (...) (D)as alles wirkt bis ins Übermass konstruiert, verkitscht und verschwurbelt. Sublimierung ist Schmitts Sache nun gewiss nicht." - Thomas Laux, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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Notes about the Reviews
and the Book's Reception:

       Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's La part de l'autre is an alternate-history, imagining a Hitler who was accepted at the Viennese art academy (and hence pursued a different life than the one he actually did) -- a minute which changed the course of the world, as the first chapter-heading has it.
       It doesn't seem to have made too much of a lasting impression, and the first reactions of the German translation (2008) were positively hostile.

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Links:

• Albin Michel publicity page

• Biblioblog (French)
• Burp (French)
• Club des rats de biblio-net (French)
• Krinein (French)
• Les livres que je lis: le blog de Phil (French)
• madmoiZelle (French)
• Neue Zürcher Zeitung (German)
• parutions (French)
• Yokai's Books (French)

• Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt site

• Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran
• The Most Beautiful Book in the World

• Harry Mulisch's De toekomst van gisteren
• See Index of French literature

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About the Author:

       French playwright and author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt was born in 1960.

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© 2008-2021 the complete review

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