Keep Saying Their Names

March 23, 2020
Stranger’s English-language debut blends fact and fiction in a haunting tale of a Jewish family impacted by the horrors of WWII. The narrator, an unnamed writer, is the grandson-in-law of Hirsch Komissar, one of 10 prisoners executed randomly by the Nazis in 1942 in reprisal for acts of sabotage by the Norwegian resistance. Hirsch’s murderer, Henry Oliver Rinnan, was, historically, a notorious Nazi collaborator who perpetrated atrocities in the Gang Monastery, an interrogation house in Trondheim. After identifying Rinnan, the narrator proceeds with “a story so monstrous and unlikely that at first I couldn’t bring myself to believe it was true”—in a ghoulishly ironic twist, the monastery became the home of Hirsch’s son, Gerson, and his family after the war. Stranger interweaves the narrator’s account of Rinnan’s despicable rise and fall with the story of Gerson and his wife, Ellen, whose marriage gradually crumbles under the weight of their home’s malignant legacy. Despite the grim subject, Stranger succeeds in shining a light of hope by keeping the memory of the dead alive. This tale of triumph and compassion is a testament to courage in the face of the darkest evil.

Starred review from April 1, 2020

"S Is for Stolperstein," says Stranger, referencing the metal plaques placed on pavements to commemorate the execution of Norwegian citizens during World War II. Stranger's first novel to be published in English further commemorates those executions, recounting an episode from the war and its aftermath featuring Henry Oliver Rinnan, a Norwegian stooge for the Nazis who tortured and killed his fellow citizens. Here we meet the Jewish Komissar family, whose head, Hirsch, is murdered by the Germans at the behest of Rinnan and his gang. The author details the rise of Rinnan from callous, undistinguished youth to head of a unit that betrays Norwegian patriots to the Nazis; many of its heinous doings take place in a house commissioned by Rinnan for that purpose. After the war, one of Komissar's sons moves into the house with his family and must relive past atrocities. By telling their story, Stranger draws on the history of his wife's own family. VERDICT This gripping narrative is presented in alphabetical "chapters" ("F Is for Firing Squad") that move quickly and seamlessly between past and present, a device that adds immediacy and depth. Highly recommended to readers interested in accounts of wartime Europe or psychological studies of evil. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/19.]--Edward B. Cone, New York

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2020
The Holocaust comes to Norway. Though its stated goal is to preserve the story of Hirsch Komissar, the author's wife's Jewish great-grandfather and the owner of a thriving boutique in Trondheim, Norway, before the German invasion in April 1940, Stranger's fact-based novel is more a portrait of one of the collaborators who abetted the process of killing hundreds of that country's Jews and others during the Holocaust. Arrested by the Germans in January 1942 for the offense of spreading news from the BBC, Hirsch is executed later that year in a Norwegian labor camp. Meanwhile, following his recruitment by the Nazis shortly after the invasion, Norwegian Henry Oliver Rinnan, the source of the information leading to Hirsch's arrest, skillfully infiltrates the nation's resistance network and, with his accomplices, runs a ruthless interrogation operation out of a house that came to be known as the "Gang Monastery." In an ironic twist, when Hirsch's son and his family return from Sweden to Trondheim in 1948, they move into the former torture headquarters, where grisly evidence of Rinnan's cruelty remains. Stranger employs an unusual storytelling technique, labeling each section with a letter of the alphabet, followed by a series of words--"A for accusation. A for arrest. A for all that will disappear and slide into oblivion"--that launches him into the pieces of nonchronological narrative that compose the novel. Not for lack of interest in Hirsch's story, but seemingly more because of the better-documented record of Rinnan's treachery and brutality, the novel's focus shifts, gradually but unmistakably, to become the chronicle of an amoral man, motivated to kill by little more than greed, lust, and a desire for revenge for the torment inflicted on him as a child because of his small physical stature and his rural family's poverty. While he doesn't lack for vivid scenes, Rinnan never comes close to qualifying as a truly complex or tragic figure, and the tragedy of Hirsch's death never fully comes to life. The story of a Nazi collaborator in Norway and one of his victims fails to engage the emotions.

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