Three Faces of an Angel - Jiří Pehe book review

This gripping and at times horrific saga detailing the lives of three generations of a German-Czech-Jewish family is very definitely a text for those with a strong interest in 20the century history. It is also raises a number of questions about politics, identity and religion. As you might expect, the novel contains tragic episodes beginning in Prague before 1914 and ending on the morning of 9/11 in a café next to the World Trade Centre. 

The triumphant final section of the book will be of particular delight to students of intellectual masturbation. The author, a political scientist, gives voice to his monstrous character, Alex, in a bruising and well argued critique of the notions of "Cold War Studies" morphing into "Globalisation" and then "post-colonialism" as practised by "best selling author-academics" in the 1970s and 1980s. Fortunately, those notions are now airbrushed from intellectual history but the bastard child they inspired is the wickedly funny notion of "the Globalization of postmodernism". 

Added to this is the frequent appearance of the angel, Ariel. Not as well known as Michael or Gabriel or in Jewish or Christian sacred texts, he is a very disturbing presence, sometimes benign, at other times downright homicidal.

Václav Havel described the original Czech text as “remarkable”, Ivan Klíma wrote that is was “one of the most outstanding novels written in the Czech lands since 1989. A truly Central European novel with a universal message”. However unlikely, it was in fact Tomáš Halík who summed up the novel best as “an unusual and powerful novel about the 20^th century, the Holocaust in particular, but also about God”. Halík being a Jesuit priest, academic sociologist and winner of the Templeton Prize in 2014 might be the best judge of nuance in this case but not all.

With scenes of the Holocaust, fighting in Siberia and a particularly sensitive description of mental illness, this book is not for the faint-hearted. It is however, a major contribution to understanding the twentieth century experience west of France and north of the Mediterranean. It is funny, scary and thought provoking - Ruritanian Gothic with angels thrown in. Liberating!