My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really liked this book!! A friend lent it to me a week ago and I have flown through it in the last couple of days – I even put down the knitting and turned off the TV for it. It’s been a while since a book has done that for me.
The premise of the story is that Michael, a Cambridge postgraduate student has written a thesis on Hitler’s early life and rise to power. He meets an elderly professor whose father was in the Aushwitz concentration camps. He has built a device which can change history by making sure Hitler was never born. But this creates problems as Michael wakes up in a different reality in Princeton, USA and the world is a very different place.
There are two storylines running at once. Michael’s story and the historical story of First World wartime Germany and the development of Hitler’s rise and alternately the man who does this in Hitler’s absence.
It gives an interesting perspective on how history would be different.
I found that in the German bits there were words and phrases in German which were not translated into English which was a little distracting. And also I would have liked to have known more about the history of Britain in the alternate reality.
But apart from that I enjoyed it. Considering it was written in 1996, before the iPad was a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye, there are some interesting takes on modern technological devices in alternate America!!
Knitsamadworld 