Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
History always recalls the large moments, the seemingly unshakeable facts that we repeat and regurgitate in class or in film, the presence of the figures that have shaped the world, for good, for their own nefarious reasons. History always understands that we are defined collectively by those instances, but for the individual the moment seems greater, the recollection arguably clearer, for they have no distraction, unlike the cheering crowd revelling in the Aut Pax Aut Bellum…either peace or war.
What Robert Harris has always been able to convey in his writing and perhaps more so in Munich, is the ability to make the reader part of process of the execution of Time, the moments in which history is created and requires witness to the event. It is a particular skill that sees the reader embody the mind of the observer without detracting the main players lives in the historical setting, to be able to share the feeling of wanting to research more into the chosen subject; Robert Harris’ greatest gift perhaps remains that he teaches you without you realising at first that the enjoyment of reading a book is only a short step, what comes after is the honesty of researching the times itself.
Although his seminal novel Fatherland remains a firm fan favourite, especially with its significant alternative history of the prologue to World War Two, Munich is a study of the moments in between Time, a thriller that encompasses the days when the world was on the edge of the war to come and the true horror that was to destroy any chance of peace until the evil of Fascism was obliterated.
What Robert Harris also brings to Munich is the opportunity to remember, that for whatever reason, there were people inside Nazi Germany to whom Hitler was an abhorrence, that all you may have read or thought of Sir Neville Chamberlin is worth re-examination, that there were fleeting glimpses even before the inevitability of carnage in Europe and the greater world, where one person could have stopped the madness, but like the mice who wanted to put a bell on the cat to alert them of his presence, nobody wanted to be the one to pull out the gun and take down the most evil of men with a single bullet.
A captivating read, Robert Harris has the absolute knack of bringing historical fact and blending it with the background of the keen eyed observer, the ones who truly see history being created.
Ian D. Hall