Agent Zigzag – Ben Macintyre                               5/10

The true story of Eddie Chapman, a ‘gentleman criminal’ who after a series of events, ends up working for both the German Abwehr and then MI5 as a double agent during the Second World War. 

Why write a sentence once, when you can then reword it three more times and make it into a paragraph? This must surely have been Macintyre’s mantra as he systematically bulked-out what would otherwise have been a fairly compelling story. In fact, there is so much down time in the book that I became increasingly frustrated waiting for the next actual event.

The story itself is good though: The pre-war Chapman is a likeable, cheeky criminal burgeoning into ever more audacious crimes, when he is convicted and sent to prison in Jersey. On mainland Britain he would have been imprisoned for 14 years, but as Jersey is invaded by the Germans he sees a way to escape prison by offering to spy for the German secret service, the Abwehr. After a stint in a hellish prison in France, his application is accepted and he trains with the Germans before being parachuted into Britain as a spy, whereupon he promptly turns himself in to the British authorities and begins life as a double agent working for MI5.

It is an exciting tale that sees Chapman visit several countries across war-torn Europe, particularly reminiscent of James Bond as he is complete with gadgets and girls (Indeed, links to Ian Fleming and Terence Young are mentioned), yet it is told with a desperate lack of panache.

Despite the lack of urgency in the writing, Macintyre does do a few things right. The book is extensively well researched for one. He delves deep into each of the secret services and explains how they operated in detail; the training Chapman receives from the Abwehr for example is especially intriguing.

I also commend Macintyre for taking great pains to remain objective, both with his treatment of Eddie Chapman and with the war as a whole. Chapman is undoubtedly a rogue and at times he is a questionable character. Macintyre does well to maintain this air of unreliability throughout the book, as a reader I don’t think I was ever fully on Chapman’s side. The writing is not jingoistic either, I think factually the British come across as more competent than that Germans, but there is very little flag waving.

I think in the hands of a more experienced thriller writer, this could have been a brilliant book. As it stands, it is still a good read, but it doesn’t quite make the cut for me. Great if you like spy glasses, spud guns and The Eagle, not so great if you’re a fan of good story telling.

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak                             7/10

Narrated by Death, this book details the story of a young girl, Leisel living in a small German town on the outskirts of Munich during the Second World War, the relationships she has with the town folk, her burgeoning love of reading and the major events surrounding her adoptive family harbouring a Jewish man called Max Vandenburg.

This is certainly one of the freshest books I have read in a long time. With the old author’s maxim ‘write about what you know’ the current book market is flooded with tales of suburban angst. This novel however, immediately turns this idea on its head by setting the tale in Nazi Germany, leaving the modern reader to be set up with an instant prejudice.

Using Death as the narrator is also an interesting literary device. He provides a politically neutral voice and is a contemplative character. His musings are often used to break up the story with small injections of thought or episodes that are set in bold text in the middle of the page to highlight them. These short passages reminded me of a kind of literary version of the title screens Quentin Tarantino uses before introducing a new scene in some of his films, which I found to be a unique and interesting style once I had got used to it.

Throughout the book we are given hints at what is coming. The reader is left in an ultimate position of dramatic irony due to the nature of the book being set in the past, during an historic period that still resonates strongly in the mind today. However, this layering of dramatic irony as the narration jumps ahead, then back, adds a seductive quality that lures the reader in.

War produces a set of moral dilemmas and contradictions for humans that the book attempts to address. Was everyone living in Nazi Germany a bad person? Of course not, and the characters of Hans and Rosa Hubermann are inherently good. Rudy Steiner strongly participates at Hitler Youth meetings and yet he has a love for Jesse Owens that directly contradicts that ideology. There are Nazis in the book, but even they aren’t all bad, although the state is presented in an almost Orwellian style as all controlling and fearful. A passage where Hans Hubermann is whipped for giving bread to a passing Jewish man is supposedly taken from Zusak’s own life and is particularly emotive.

It is not without its faults of course. I felt the setting up of Leisel’s life before the arrival of Max Vandenburg is drawn out and at times unnecessary. I would have liked a bit more of the wider context at times as a developing hysteria in the country isn’t really reflected enough for me. Also, the style of Death appears to change throughout the book and I don’t think it’s intentional. He is more flippant at the beginning and his interludes are more frequent, before fading a bit at the end.

Despite these minor things it is a very strong novel. I read that in America it was marketed as a children’s book which surprises me because despite the fact it primarily focuses on the child characters, there are some very strong and moving themes and at times it can be quite dark. That said, there are still scenes of hope and I would recommend this book to anyone.

Jerusalem - Guy Delisle

Jerusalem – Guy Delisle                         9/10

Firstly, I should point out that this is quite different from the other books I have previously reviewed for this blog. For starters it is non-fiction (although I’m not adverse to reviewing non-fiction – Selling Hitler for example is mostly non-fiction) and secondly it is a graphic book. I think it falls into the genre of ‘Graphic Novel’ but it is not really a novel and is in fact more of a ‘graphic travelogue’.

Jerusalem is the fourth such graphic travelogue that Delisle has produced. During his early career he worked for a Canadian animation studio and it was through overseeing the outsourcing of the animation work to the Far East, which took him to China and then North Korea. His first two travelogues (Shenzhen and Pyongyang) depict his stays in each of these countries, often for months at a time, where he adjusts to working with people from a different culture and the challenges that presents, especially the loneliness of living out of a basic hotel room. These books are at times funny, slightly sad and overwhelmingly oppressive as he literally paints the picture of the restrictive regimes.

Fast forward ten years and Jerusalem follows the pattern set out in Burma Chronicles (his third such book) where Delisle is now married with two children and is travelling primarily because his wife works for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders). The book chronicles his day to day life still, but he is now not tied to a job, not a nine-to-five job at least. He has more freedom of movement (relatively speaking, it is still Palestine after all) and is able to explore the country more fully.

The book is broken down into monthly sections, but really it details small events that can range from a page of six to eight panels, through to four or five pages worth. Each of these events is an episode during their stay in Jerusalem and some can be as mundane as taking the kids to a new park he finds, through to the terror of the action around the Gaza War of 2008-2009.

Palestine and the Middle Eastern question is not really alien territory to graphic novelists, Joe Sacco has widely covered the subject from inside Palestine. From the Israeli perspective we have the very successful Waltz with Bashir, as well as Sarah Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less and the work of Rutu Modan.

This book however, tries very hard to play down the politics. It is ever present, just as I think the politics of the Middle East are ever present when you are there, but Delisle also shows the normality of people’s lives. The family chooses to live in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of town, which is a politically motivated decision, yet the politics of it are not forced onto the reader. Deilisle plays it off as his wife’s work and he is just going along with what she tells him. He is more concerned with going out for a beer, or having a bit of free time away from the children.

The comic moments are the excellent comic moments of everyday life. The ice cream seller that won’t sell him an ice cream because Passover is two days away and it might contain yeast, despite the fact that he is not Jewish, is typical of the sort of ridiculous bureaucracy that we have all experienced at some point. The exasperating nature of the restrictions is also dealt with comically, despite the obvious dangers.

Clearly, I like his work. I don’t know much about art but his drawings seem simple, and accessible. This is certainly his ‘cleanest’ work to date, but that I mean it looks less sketched and more polished. I also think it is my favourite of his books so I heartily recommend it. The great thing about graphic novels is that because there is so much going on in the images, you can follow the narrative easily, but then re-read the book fairly quickly in order to catch bits you missed the first time round.