"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" - This is the moral of the story that the author states in the introduction.Mother Night is an account of the confessions of Howard. W. Campbell Jr. from a prison in old Jerusalem in the year 1961 where he awaits a fair trial for his war crimes.
The story starts when he introduces himself as an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation and a nationless person by inclination. What he missed, however was that he was also secretly a US spy. His secret unknown not just to the world but his parents and even his wife. The reader delves into the life of Howard through his own account where he sketches his biography from his birth in 1912 to his coming to the jail of Israel and more.
The first twist in his life occurs in the year 1938 when his 'Blue fairy Godmother' recruits him as an American agent. Among the various reasons for his acceptance of the offer, in his own words, 'the best reason was that I was a ham. As a spy of the sort he described, I would have an opportunity for some pretty grand acting'. And that is what he did. As a writer and broadcaster of Nazi propaganda, he passed coded information out of Germany, information that he himself never came to know.
After the war, he was high on the list of the war criminals but his neck was saved and for 15 years, he led his life in purgatory in New York.The next twist of his life occurs when he was rediscovered by his admirers and captors simultaneously. His love returned to him and a friend found. However soon everything was devastated. Everything lost, when he could not find any reason to move on, he surrendered to Israel himself.
One of the salient features of the novel is its short chapters that are brief and yet they embrace in themselves the whole of the idea introduced in that chapter. They although based on a single central concept, are diverse from one another and each of them start by taking up a loose end left in the previous chapter. The protagonist, Howard is well aware of his two lives. He could be many things at once - all sincerely. And strangely he is devoid of both self admiration and self pity. Throughout the story we meet curious characters. Some ignorant and insane, some strange in different ways. And although the meetings are brief, they leave strong impressions on the reader.
It is a grieving gruesome and strangely funny tale based on some not-so-funny themes. Through sharp humour and daring satire, the author sketches the effects of activities of totalatarians and our own decisions. The characters are left to the judgement of the readers with no conclusive inference drawn. An event by even dissection of Howard's life is presented and the readers are allowed to form their own opinion. And although, nowhere a deduction is explicitly written, the horrors of his life are easily discernible. The end, however, leads the readers to the moral which was introduced in the beginning. Howard pretended to be a Nazi, nobody saw the honest self he hid so deep inside but at the end when he is about to be a free man again, he finds the prospect nauseating.
Mother Night encompasses a tale of illusion, reality, high treason, loyalty, love and war, all in itself. It is the story of a person fragmented socially and emotionally by one of his honest decisions. The book is a great read because of its theme, style and realism.
[Book Review by Ankita Mukherjee]
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