The Book of Kings (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: James Thackara
- First Published: 1999
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The 1930’s through the 1960’s
- Setting: France, Germany, the Soviet Union, Algeria, and Brazil
- Principal Characters: Baron David Barthold von Sunda zu Saale, Johannes Godard, Justin Lothaire, Duncan Penn, Hélène Le Trève, Luz Holti, Heidrun Dolin, Adolf Hitler
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, Africa or Africans, France or French people, 1940’s, World War II, 1930’s, South America or South Americans, Germany or German people, Soviet Union or Soviets
- Locales: France, Soviet Union, Brazil, Germany, Algeria
The Book of Kings is obviously modeled after Leo Tolstoy’s Voyna i mir (1865-1869; War and Peace, 1886) and has been compared by most reviewers, favorably and unfavorably, with that Russian masterpiece. In one scene, James Thackara even pays homage to the man author Ivan Turgenev called “the great writer of the Russian people” when Lieutenant David Sunda visits Tolstoy’s estate at Yasnaya Polyana, while participating in Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Like War and Peace, Thackara’s novel begins with the threat of war looming in the...
[The entire page is 2057 words long]
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