The Time of Light - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gunnar Kopperud was born in 1946 and studied theater in Strasbourg and at RADA in London. He also took a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Oslo. He has worked as a journalist, and spent the last few years mainly in Africa. He now lives in Norway.

Tiina Nunnally is the prize-winning translator of Smilla's Sense of Snow.

Rezensionen

Against the backdrop of war in 1990s Armenia, a German soldier named Markus seeks atonement for his actions during the Battle of Stalingrad 50 years earlier. As he relates his story to a sympathetic priest, we are delivered back to the time of his service, ending with his capture by the Russians. With a mixture of penitence, self-justification, and opportunism, Markus chooses to desert his wife and young son in Germany to carry on with a new life in Armenia after his release from imprisonment; however, his true burden involves his role as a subversive agent for Russia's interest in the territory, and his story is reflected in the contemporary conflict. This is a very learned first novel from an admired philosopher and journalist, and the author's thoughts on free will, redemption, and the existence of evil are very much in evidence in the characters' mouths, making for slightly stiff reading. Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is evoked, and readers desiring a similar meditation on the immorality of war and other personal crimes should take note.DMarc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

War and its consequences are the subjects of Norway-based journalist Kopperud's dreamlike first novel, set during a 10-day skirmish between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1994. As that conflict unfolds, it triggers the haunted memories of WWII vet Markus Wagner, a German expatriate who participated in the Nazi army's disastrous winter 1942-1943 battle and occupation of Stalingrad. Burdened by the weight of his past, Markus recounts his story to an old Armenian priest, in wide-ranging conversations that touch on everything from Bertrand Russell to the inevitability of war atrocities. Chief among these in Markus's recollection are the torching of a Russian church filled with civilians, and the rape and murder of a village girl. In both cases, Markus is tormented by his own conflicted role. Kopperud spaces the war scenes far apart, with lots of philosophy and history in between. When the memories do come, they are filled with microscopic detail and stark imagery, and they possess a veneer of shimmering beauty, thanks to Kopperud's lyrical descriptions of the most base savagery. "Some stories must either never be told or be told only the way dreams are told," says one character, an Armenian survivor of Turkish brutality, and Kopperud obliges with fanciful, hallucinatory scenes such as one in which a musically gifted German sniper plays a duet in gunfire with his Russian counterpart. While Markus is the book's central figure, the third-person narrative encompasses other viewpoints as wellAmost successfully that of Rachel, the Jewish lover Markus left behind in Norway. Other characters include Manfred and Dieter, fellow soldiers in Markus's unit. Gracefully manipulating fragmented voices and a patchwork narrative, Kopperud crafts a moving modernist meditation on German war guilt and the fundamental nature of good and evil, light and dark. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See review on p.1994.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

A brooding first novel, the work of a German-born Norwegian journalist, that explores the experience of WWII through the (literal, extended) confession of Markus, a former Nazi soldier captured during the siege of Stalingrad, who has remained in Russia following his release. Kopperud contrasts Markus's guilty memories of his own combat experiences to those of two other soldiers-the idealistic, gung-ho Dieter and the gentle, musically inclined Manfred (opposed halves of the German soul?)-and then juxtaposes their stories against those of three German girls who are their homefront counterparts. Echoes of Erich Maria Remarque's once-famous Three Comrades and (to a lesser extent) André Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just abound, in an overly discursive, unfortunately undramatic fiction: it tells us little more than that war is hell, and takes a hell of a long time saying so. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.