Publication
Amsterdam De Bezige Bij 2001
ISBN
9023462157 / 9789023462156
Language
Collection
Description
Can a work of imagination help to understand the nature of evil? This question, posed to Rudolf Herter as he reads from his book The Invention of Love, sparks off a series of strange events. The story two old servants of Hitler tell is more terrible than anything Herter can imagine.
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User reviews
LibraryThing member thorold
The novel Siegfried is a short, dark meditation on Hitler, written towards the end of Mulisch's life. The distinguished, seventy-year-old Dutch writer Rudolf Herter is on a trip to Vienna as guest of the Dutch embassy to promote his thousand-page millennium-novel The invention of love (...is this
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starting to sound like anyone we know?) when he bumps into an elderly couple who turn out to have been employed as personal servants at the Berghof in Obersalzberg during and immediately before the war, and are in possession of a terrible secret they unaccountably want to share with a random passing novelist before they die... Mulisch uses this as the hook for a partly historical, partly metaphysical, and partly fantastic exploration of who Hitler was and why we have so much difficulty pinning him down psychologically and philosophically. Probably mostly nonsense, but very elegant and erudite nonsense, and eminently readable. Show Less
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
This book poses the question of what if Hitler had a son? It takes that jumping off point to explore an issue that has puzzled many--why was Hitler so evil? I liked the part of the book imagining the war-time life of Hitler, as Eva Braun bears him a hidden son. I found the philosophical musings by
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a fictional present-day narrator sandwiching the story less interesting. I like Harry Mulisch as an author very much, and recommend his book The Assault over this one, although this one raises some fascinating points. Show Less
Awards
Boekenbon Literatuurprijs (Nominatie — 2001)
Libris Literatuur Prijs (Shortlist — 2002)
Inktaap (Nominee — 2003)
Original publication date
2001-01-??