Book Review - The Third Reich by Roberto Bolano

The Third Reich by Roberto Bolano, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

London: Picador, 2011                                    ISBN 9780330535793

Roberto Bolano is an author I've heard a bit about without ever having a chance to read him until now. I know he died in 2003, and this book was not published in its original Spanish until 2010, so it's unclear to me whether the author considered this work as finished, or how much editing has taken place to present this book before the reader.

Putting aside these speculations, what we have here is a book that is fascinating to read, but hard to make sense of. It's written in the form of the diary of Udo Berger, who is on holidays in Spain with his girlfriend Ingeborg. Udo is German champion of a wargame called The Third Reich, based on World War Two campaigns. His diary explains that while on holiday he hopes to write an article for a gaming magazine, which is a possibility opened up for him by his victories. Undo and Ingeborg meet another German couple, Charley and Hanna, and start to hang out with them at the beach and in the bars and nightclubs. Udo can speak Spanish (he is staying at the same hotel where he spent his childhood holidays), and the four Germans hook up with the "Wolf" and the "Lamb", two Spanish neer-do-wells. Udo is also becoming obsessed with Frau Else, who runs the hotel (and who he tries to bed throughout the book), and El Quemado, a man who runs pedal-boats at the beach, and who is horribly disfigured by burns.

The holiday begins to fall apart for Udo: he can't get his article going, he finds Charley and Hanna hard work and Ingeborg is increasingly upset with Udo's obsession with his wargame. Then Charley disappears while windsurfing, and because Udo can speak Spanish he helps Hanna deal with the authorities during the search (Charley's body eventually is found), in what because a slightly Kafka-esque brush with power. Udo by this stage is also prowling the hotel looking for Frau Else and her elusive, allegedly ill, husband. Udo has also begun to play a game of Third Reich with El Quemado, teaching him the rules along the way. This game becomes an obsession, with Udo staying in Spain past the end of his holiday to complete it. Ingeborg, disgusted, leaves him, and then he finally meets Frau Else's husband, who intimates that Udo is playing El Quemado for his soul.

When Udo finally gets back to Germany, he is a changed man. He returns to his gaming fraternity, but his heart is no longer in it: perhaps losing to El Quemado has changed him.

It was hard for me to grasp what, if anything, Bolano had to say in this book. At times he is almost nostalgic for the real Third Reich, with his loving descriptions of Nazi Generals and their personality traits, and turning what was one of the appalling events in World history into a game. There is an air of nostalgia throughout the book, with references to Udo's childhood holidays regularly appearing. it is a book about obsession, and how that can derail a life, even temporarily.

I'm still "processing" this book two weeks after reading it, and will be for some time yet. I will be reading more Bolano.


Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell