Pearl and Stasha are twin girls in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Dr Josef Mengele preserves Jews who are twins or genetic abnormalities so he can experiment on them, in hopes of learning about genetic purity. The twins alternate in telling the story of their arrival at the camp, their experiences there, and life afterwards. This way, Affinity Konar gives an account of the nature of the concentration camp. We learn that Mengele performs horrific experiments, although there is very little detail about him. He remains mostly a shadowy and remote figure in the novel, but he is cruel and unpleasant, and the inmates long to murder him as he murders so many of them. The girls are extremely close with each other, and the group of mostly twin children is an environment that emphasizes the pairing. Pearl and Stasha become separated and so the narrative divides into two as we follow each of them.  We get to see how the experiments had no scientific validity, because many of the supposed twins were in fact just siblings close in age. But the larger themes are about making sense of horror and finding ways to survive both during it and also after the war, with the memories of what has happened. A central issue is whether to seek revenge on the men who were part of the extermination and experimenting, or whether the survivors would do better to forgive.

Mischling is a hard novel to read because it is an almost constant stream of pain and horror. The language is distinct and evocative. The course of events has a familiar historical framework, but the story of the girls is unique. The cast of characters is large, and it requires some attention to work out what exactly is going on. A number of readers on Amazon complain that they found the book hard to get through, and this is easy to understand.  But there is enough here to keep the reader going. It is equally understandable why Konar’s novel has made many “best of 2016” lists, because this is an impressive work that examines one of the most terrible parts of human history. Yet the theme of the separated twins yearning to be reunited is surprisingly unmoving. The characters hardly get to know each other and we learn minimal amounts about their pasts or their families. Sometimes the language seems stilted and a little formal. Many readers will be alienated by this.  The performance of the unabridged audiobook by Vanessa Johansson is on the cold side. Working out how to read this text must be very difficult: it is easy to overemphasize the emotion with such awful events, but Johansson may go too far in the other direction in making the girls seem rather distant from their emotions.

© 2016 Christian Perring

Christian Perring teaches philosophy in the NYC area..