Review of Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin by Jerome Charyn

The 1920 German silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari featured a mad scientist and a somnambulist named Cesare who did his bidding. Adding to his repertoire of unique historical interpretations, Charyn transplants this scenario into Nazi Germany, a setting with nightmarish qualities made real.

His “Cesare” is Erik Holdermann, who survives childhood trauma to become the henchman of Wilhelm Canaris, head of Germany’s military spy network, after saving the older man’s life. Acting against the Nazi regime from within, they quietly try to help individual Jews escape, but in a place rife with revenge murders and double and triple agents, discovery is inevitable; the only question is when.

The taut story line is full of surreal visuals and elaborate illusions, from Berlin’s Weisse Maus cabaret, reborn as a Gestapo club, to the purported Jewish cultural center at Theresienstadt. The toxic atmosphere distorts everyone’s nature, and if that’s not disturbing enough, there are too many superficially depicted, sex-obsessed female characters who enjoy physical abuse. Inventive, intense, and repellent in equal measure.

Cesare was published this month by Bellevue Literary Press, and I wrote this review for Booklist's Nov 15th issue.

Charyn writes in many styles and has specialized in creative mixtures of fact and fiction focusing on historical characters, such as Teddy Roosevelt (The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King) and writers Jerzy Kosinski (Jerzy) and Emily Dickinson (The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson). This was one of those novels I admired more than I enjoyed. It received starred reviews in Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, and is getting raves elsewhere, but I haven't seen other reviews that mention its depiction of women. I appreciated the creative thought behind the presentation of the setting, and the blurb described it as a love story, in part, but I can't say I read it that way.