Highly original and deeply researched, Catherine Chidgey’s Remote Sympathy is a powerful and disturbing study in terrible lies and the human need to believe them... Few readers will close the covers of this book unshaken.”―Annie Proulx, author of Barkskins
★ “With its multiple registers and complex view of humanity, Remote Sympathy marks a vital turn in Holocaust literature.”—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“Catherine Chidgey’s second novel to be set in Nazi Germany is about how much people are able to overlook—and in doing so, perpetuate evil [ . . . ] surely one of the scariest books of the year.”—Elena Nicolaou, O, The Oprah Magazine, Most Anticipated Historical Fiction of 2021
“‘Simply being’ is a major achievement for two of the three central characters in Catherine Chidgey’s powerful new novel, which is set on both sides of the barbed wire barriers at Buchenwald.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A well-researched addition [to] Holocaust fiction.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Immersive, profound, and beautifully plotted.”―The Guardian
“Are there new ways to tell stories of the Holocaust that are neither crass nor exploitative? In this moving and unusual novel, the New Zealand writer Catherine Chidgey shows that there are. Her novel is a fine achievement.”—The Sunday Times, Best Historical Fiction of the Month
“An insightful account of human nature set against the chaos of war. It is a moving examination of the human condition and well worth serious attention.”—Historical Novels Society
“The writing is beautifully wrought and the research a result of years of study. The novelist illustrates the senseless cruelty of the regime and portrays its characters convincingly, not as monsters but deluded, indulged and frightened victims of their own stupidity.”—The Jewish Chronicle
“Extraordinary and engrossing... Chidgey’s exploration of willful obliviousness is chilling and utterly gripping.”—Radio New Zealand
“Remote Sympathy is a haunting book with an intriguing premise at its heart... An extremely emotive and impactful story, set amidst a devastating historical episode that nevertheless provides an element of hope at its core. This book will stay with me for a long while yet: a magnificent accomplishment.”—BuzzMag (UK)
“Chidgey is a mesmerising storyteller and a brilliant historian, a combination that reminded me of the novelist Hilary Mantel. Remote Sympathy is one of the most original, brave and profound explorations of the darkest recesses of the human heart I have ever read. Like the Sympathetic Vitalizer, Lenard’s mysterious invention, her novel also manages to inspire feelings of genuine empathy and hope, welcome antidotes to today’s climate of cynicism and despair.”—Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind
“In its deft melding of fact and fiction, its skillful examination of human sympathy and faith, its dramatic tension and quiet lyricism, Remote Sympathy takes us bravely, compellingly into the uncertain heart of human complicity.”—The New Zealand Hearld
“This astonishing book, with its inextricable braid of sadness and determination... forces us to face and review our relations with humanity... This is exactly the book we need now.”—Kete
“To read Remote Sympathy in 2020 is to read it within the context of the rise of powerful white supremacists around the world, made more dangerous by the global crisis of Covid [ . . . ] Remote Sympathy is beautifully written and [ . . . ] wears the weight of Chidgey’s years of detailed research lightly.”—The Spinoff (New Zealand)
2021-02-10
The perspectives of perpetrators, victim, and bystanders evoke the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Noted New Zealand author Chidgey’s latest is a lengthy, well-researched addition to the already sizable shelf of Holocaust fiction. Dr. Lenard Weber is a Mischling, only part Jewish, but he ends up at Buchenwald, having been summoned there by Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn. Hahn’s role at the camp is administrative officer—overseeing budgets, plumbing, etc. The inmates are less than human to him but not so his wife, Greta, with whom he lives in a luxury villa. When Greta develops ovarian cancer, Dietrich will try any medical resource, which leads him to Weber, inventor of the Sympathetic Vitaliser, a machine designed to destroy cancerous tumors. Weber narrates his story in 1946, via letters written to his daughter, who's in the Theresienstadt ghetto; Dietrich’s account dates from the 1950s; Greta's "imaginary diary" takes her from 1943 to 1945; and a fourth narrative voice emanates from 1,000 citizens of Weimar, whose awareness of the vast camp nearby is filtered through propaganda, self-interest, and delusion. Packed with precise details about the camp, German culture, the Nazi machine, and much more, the novel offers a sober reflection on a country seized by dehumanizing insanity, corrupted by lies and cruelty. Yet the characterization is predictable, especially when it comes to Dietrich, a familiar blend of Aryan orderliness, contempt, and deception. Greta senses the abyss on her doorstep but averts her eyes. Weber is a sympathetic lens through which the worst of the suffering may be glimpsed. And the Weimar citizens embody denial, disgust, and disbelief. As the war wraps up, deliverance for one survivor contrasts with guiltless acceptance by the German community.
This serious effort to evoke the crucible of German fascism proves less effective at conveying emotional resonance.
