'Munich' review: history comes alive

A compactly constructed and resourcefully written novel

In stepping beyond the dry pursuit of ‘factology,’ historical fiction engages with real events and makes them instantly relatable through a rich tapestry of fictionalised characters and narrative. It delves deeper and explores the basic human responses of fear and confidence, pain and euphoria in the midst of the inexorable march if history. Both foundational histories and fictional accounts of human civilization with its unpredictable upheavals are the outcome of subjective opinions, yet the latter does not carry the pretence of being closer to ‘truth’. History is indeed memory’s truth often exaggerated or vilified and never objective.

Munich , Robert Harris’ latest novel, addresses the historical account of the 1938 Munich Agreement that ceded the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany for a promise of peace from Hitler. However, this agreement only postponed the war by a year. For Neville Chamberlain, the agreement was astute strategy to give Britain a year to augment its military preparations.

Compactly constructed and resourcefully written, the novel is set in the autumn of 1938 in Munich. Central to the novel are two friends from Oxford: Hugh Legat from the British Foreign Service attached to Chamberlain’s office, and Paul von Hartmann, a Nazi card-holder conspiring to overthrow the Fuhrer. Both come together when the British and German entourages meet. Hartmann tries to surreptitiously pass secret information to Legat warning him of Hitler’s designs in central Europe. The move is unmistakably intended to sabotage the Munich Treaty so that war could break out and facilitate a coup by the Germany military against “that vulgar Austrian corporal.”

The novel is dramatic, as the peace envisaged by Chamberlain unravels into World War II and behind the fragile attempt at peace lurks an electrifying plot to eliminate Hitler, the accomplishment of which could have changed the tide of history.

Intertwined with the historical is personal intrigue. Hitler is rumoured to have had an affair with his niece, Geli Raubal, and also simultaneously with Eva Braun and another staff member. Legat’s wife has an illicit affair, and Hartmann is suspicious of his lover from the German foreign ministry.

The author is Professor Emeritus and Fellow, Panjab University, Chandigarh.

Munich; Robert Harris, Hutchinson, ₹599