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Mother Night
Rating: 
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Published: October, 1999
Review by: CL4 Shuriff
Today I'm once again going to start my rewiew with another sad but trivial thought: history of humanity is filled with cruelty and blood. From ancient Egypt to facist Germany and beyond, to modern days of Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein people make horrible things, sometimes slaughtering whole nations. The most interesting part is that most horrible things in human history were always done for HIGHER GOAL. Mostly all those monsters like Hitler really believed that the things they were doing were good. But there always were another sort of people: people who know that they are doing evil things, but thinking that
the GOAL is more important then MEANS, by which this goal is achieved.
Howard Campbell, Jr. is an American, who lived in Germany during WWII. Just before the war he was recruited by american intelligence and through all WWII he has been one of the most important american agents in Germany. To keep his secret, he had to PRETEND that he is a Nazi, and work for facist Ministry of Propaganda as a writer and propaganda radio announcer. And he did it surprisingly well. Only three people in the world knew that he's working for allies, while the rest of the world thought that he is a VERY SUCCESFUL Nazi propagadist.
After the war was over, the only thing american government has done for him, is letting him live. He has secretly settled in New-York and lived quietly until one day his past reached him and he suddenly faced everything he did during the war from the other side. Now he has to decide by himself who he really is: patriot of his country or Nazi war criminal. And believe me, it isn't a simple question to answer.
As usual for Vonnegut, this book is written in brilliant language and is 'constructed' in his special unbelievable manner. From the very start of the book you more or less know how it's gonna end, but strangely that makes you even more anxious to read the book from the very first page to the last one as attentively as possible. As usual, rich and vivid characters, sometimes little grotesque, but very believable, as usual encyclopedic knowlerge of history, as usual interesting plot and philosophic idea behind all this. As a result we get another Vonnegut's masterpiece. Don't miss this one. It's more then worth reading.
Title: Mother Night
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Review by: CL4 Shuriff
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