War and Remembrance

"Wouk writes an enormous panoramic novel about World War II . War and Remembrance is the second half of this two-volume novel – the first half is The Winds of War . He gathers a cast of characters who lead the reader across continents into different theatres of the conflict. His prose is very clear and unsentimental as he narrates one horror after another. This war really was a global convulsion, and not that long ago. Then suddenly, halfway through the second volume, a main character gives an amazing soliloquy, set in one of the Nazi camps. It’s a lecture on Job, delivered to a group of Jews the night before many of them will be deported to Auschwitz. This character calls God down to judgement, the way that the biblical Job did. He urges that unless humanity is in some kind of dialogue with God, there is no possibility of transcendence and no possibility of justice. It’s a very religious moment in the novel and a very moving moment. And then the scene ends and Wouk moves on. God doesn’t show up again until the last couple of paragraphs of the novel. In his finale, Wouk plays with the idea of fiction and history, saying that none of his characters really existed – but that 50 million real people did die in the war. And then he ends by summoning his readers with a call to justice, to moral behaviour, the way his character earlier on had done. God doesn’t show up much in modern fiction. Wouk very deftly and briefly conjures the character, to great effect."