Mendelssohn Is On The Roof Summary

On the roof of prague s concert hall julius schlesinger aspiring ss officer is charged with the removal of the statue of the jew mendelssohn but which one is he.

Mendelssohn is on the roof summary.

It is an exploration of the many forms of corruption in nazi occupied czechoslovakia and embeds historical events such as the assassination of reinhard heydrich in prague in 1942 among fictional stories concerning the holocaust nazi careerism and the rise of nazism. The book took 15 years to write. Above these loom the unnamed head of the central bureau responsible for managing the. The enigmatic title of jiri weil s newly published novel refers to an incident in the.

Mendelssohn is on the roof by jiri weil translated by marie winn. In mendelssohn is on the roof we see the ripple effects that such a ludicrous decree can have. Farrar straus giroux. We see how quickly individuals turn against each other feel forced or reduced to report others.

This is the bleakly comic strand of mendelssohn is on the roof highlighting the banality of evil its operation through ordinary and often incompetent bureaucratic processes and people. Mendelssohn is on the roof copyrighted after his death in 1959 and translated to english in 1991 is a series of fictional intertwined cameos of life under the nazis for jews and czechs in prague and czechoslovakia during the nazi occupation from 1938 through 1942.