The Feeling of Iron - by Giaime Alonge (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Stunning...Alonge's style is as cinematic as the finest classic thrillers...In its scope and beauty, The Feeling of Iron also recalls great 19th-century novels like Tolstoy's War and Peace, while its lyric, spare examination of a covert life is reminiscent of Joan Didion's Democracy. Clarissa Botsford's translation is precise and eloquent, never splashy. Every line is a jewel." Lea Carpenter, The New York Times

In 1941, SS Major Hans Lichtblau is put in charge of a re-search program that is part of the infamous "final solution." Two men survive the experiments to become inconvenient witnesses of a world that has ended and yet weighs heavily on the present.

Four decades later, on behalf of different and apparently irreconcilable clients, the two veterans set out on the trail of Lichtblau, who is fighting the Sandinistas on behalf of the CIA, raiding villages, and trafficking in drugs. The manhunt is a race against time, because one life may be too short to settle all accounts.

"A powerful holocaust novel that goes to unexpected places." Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Review Quotes

"Alonge is a screenwriter and an associate professor of film history at the University of Turin, and his style is as cinematic as the finest classic thrillers. As characters from the novel's two timelines converge, every narrative puzzle piece laid down in the past locks in perfectly. In its scope and beauty, The Feeling of Iron also recalls great 19th-century novels like Tolstoy's War and Peace, while its lyric, spare examination of a covert life is reminiscent of Joan Didion's Democracy. Clarissa Botsford's translation is precise and eloquent, never splashy. Every line is a jewel."--Lea Carpener, The New York Times Book Review

"In The Feeling of Iron author Alonge explores the dark side of revenge as a tool of personal delusion and national self-destruction."--Historical Novels Review