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A review by hieronymous
De Fordømtes Legion: Dansk udgave by Sven Hazel, Sven Hassel
3.0
This is not a book I'd normally read, but when I was 13 or 14 - when I first read this book - it certainly was. I came across this in a discount bookshop a little while ago and it brought back memories. I felt a nostalgic curiosity. I had read all of Sven Hassel's books when I was a kid, and a few times over - what would I think of them now? And so I bought the book and took it home with me.
I think re-reading old books is quite like what Heraclitus said about not stepping into the same river twice, for the river is changed and so is the man. So it is coming back to a familiar book after many years - especially when in between you've grown from boy to man. Reading is a personal, subjective experience, subject to time and space. As with music, we make associations, we experience it through our own personal circumstances. That's why reviews should only be a guide, because each of us reads with different eyes.
When I was a boy was enraptured by the brutal tales of the 27th Penal Regiment fighting on the eastern front against the Russian hordes. It was brutal and sometimes coarse, but what boy doesn't enjoy that? The characters were vivid and compelling and easy to like, even if they were the Germans - something I chose to overlook back then. These books and similar made up a great swathe of my teenage reading.
Years later I read it again and it is familiar very quickly. I recall the tone, angry at times and bitter occasionally and often fatalistic - none think they'll survive this war. But it has moments of broad humour also, even insight. In my memory this was the best of his books because I deemed it to be the most real - it was the book I could believe the most. It's episodic though, cramming the violent events of about four years into 250 odd pages.
It's not a book I would choose to read now normally, but still I raced through the last hundred pages, anticipating the moments recalled to memory as I read and wanting to experience them again. I'm glad I read these books when I was a kid, and glad to have read this one again. I would recommend to anyone who wants to experience this particular genre of WW2 literature - the first person, violent, brutal, almost nihilistic perspective of the German war on the Eastern front in Russia.
Even better, read The Forgotten Soldier - a classic. And another favourite of mine, if you can find it - The Torrents of War by Igor Sentjurc.
I think re-reading old books is quite like what Heraclitus said about not stepping into the same river twice, for the river is changed and so is the man. So it is coming back to a familiar book after many years - especially when in between you've grown from boy to man. Reading is a personal, subjective experience, subject to time and space. As with music, we make associations, we experience it through our own personal circumstances. That's why reviews should only be a guide, because each of us reads with different eyes.
When I was a boy was enraptured by the brutal tales of the 27th Penal Regiment fighting on the eastern front against the Russian hordes. It was brutal and sometimes coarse, but what boy doesn't enjoy that? The characters were vivid and compelling and easy to like, even if they were the Germans - something I chose to overlook back then. These books and similar made up a great swathe of my teenage reading.
Years later I read it again and it is familiar very quickly. I recall the tone, angry at times and bitter occasionally and often fatalistic - none think they'll survive this war. But it has moments of broad humour also, even insight. In my memory this was the best of his books because I deemed it to be the most real - it was the book I could believe the most. It's episodic though, cramming the violent events of about four years into 250 odd pages.
It's not a book I would choose to read now normally, but still I raced through the last hundred pages, anticipating the moments recalled to memory as I read and wanting to experience them again. I'm glad I read these books when I was a kid, and glad to have read this one again. I would recommend to anyone who wants to experience this particular genre of WW2 literature - the first person, violent, brutal, almost nihilistic perspective of the German war on the Eastern front in Russia.
Even better, read The Forgotten Soldier - a classic. And another favourite of mine, if you can find it - The Torrents of War by Igor Sentjurc.