Dominion
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- نقد و بررسی
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نقد و بررسی
November 18, 2013
In the intriguing prologue of Sansom’s solid what-if historical thriller, British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax succeeds Neville Chamberlain as prime minister on May 9, 1940, instead of Winston Churchill. Later that year, Britain makes peace with Germany. Flash forward to 1952. While the country is not technically under Nazi occupation, its citizens live in fear of speaking their minds, and Churchill heads a shadowy resistance movement. David Fitzgerald, a senior official in the Dominions Office, begins to rebel against his country’s leadership after the tragic accidental death of his almost-three-year-old son, and is tapped to aid the resistance in a plan to free a scientist who carries a potentially world-changing secret. Sansom’s prose is as assured as ever, but his plotting doesn’t match that of his clever Elizabethan historicals (Dissolution, etc.). Fans of such Nazi triumphant novels as Len Deighton’s SS-GB and Robert Harris’s Fatherland will find this a satisfying, if more predictable read.
November 1, 2013
Sansom is known primarily for his series of historical novels featuring sixteenth-century lawyer Matthew Shardlake, but Winter in Madrid (2008), a spy thriller set in 1940, brought the author some serious acclaim. More is sure to follow with this gripping alternate-history story set in England in the early 1950s. David Fitzgerald, a civil servant, is a member of the Resistance, a group dedicated to expelling the Nazis from England (in Sansom's version of twentieth-century history, England surrendered to Hitler in May 1940). When David is given a very delicate assignmentextricate scientist Frank Muncaster from a mental hospital before the Nazis discover the potentially world-altering secrets in Muncaster's possessionhe doesn't count on being pursued by a relentless Gestapo agent, Gunther Hoth, who will stop at nothing to silence Muncaster. A race-against-time thriller set against an imaginative and internally consistent historical backdrop, the novel should definitely appeal to fans of alternate history, especially the WWII novels of Harry Turtledove or Robert Conroy, and, of course, Robert Harris' classic Fatherland (1992).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)
August 1, 2013
In Sansom's reimagining of 20th-century history, Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany without a fight, the appeasers having trumped Churchill. There's a Resistance, though, and civil servant David Fitzgerald belongs to it. His latest assignment? Get crucial scientist Frank Muncaster out of a mental hospital. Alas, nasty Gestapo agent Gunther Hoth is on his trail. Sansom, best known for his entertaining Shardlake mysteries, had huge success with the 1940s-set spy novel Winter in Madrid and could repeat it here.
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 15, 2013
Neville Chamberlain's preferred successor as Britain's prime minister in May 1940 was his dour foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, not the brilliant but sometimes rash Winston Churchill. Sansom's new stand-alone (after Winter in Madrid) ponders what might have happened if Chamberlain had had his way: a surrendered Britain at peace following the fall of France and governed by the likes of Max Beaverbrook, Oswald Moseley, and other quislings under Hitler's thumb; a Nazi Germany still caught in a seemingly endless death struggle deep within the vastness of Russia; and a United States (under Adlai Stevenson!) still aloof from foreign entanglement. Sansom's alternative world feels genuine and includes delicious scenes such as a sappy, smiling Hitler riding down the Mall beside George VI in the golden State Coach while the stone-faced king bites his stiff upper lip. The protagonists include Frank Muncaster, the brother of an American-based nuclear scientist, attempting to deny Germany the secrets of the atomic bomb, civil servant (and spy for the English Resistance) David Fitzgerald, whose Jewish heritage must eventually affect his survival in a country slowly going mad, and Gestapo agent Gunther Hoth. VERDICT This speculative and intriguing thriller sucks readers into an alternative world that reveals its rewritten history only slowly, creating in us a page-turning craving for the details. Recommended for fans of World War II and totalitarian-era political fiction, history buffs, and those who enjoy alternative history generally. [See Prepub Alert, 7/29/13.]--Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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