Umbrella

by Ferdinand Mount

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0434002003
• ISBN13: 9780434002009
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Was the Crimean War a mistake?

A fictionalized biography of Lord Aberdeen, who was Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time of the Crimean War. The Crimean War was the Iraq of the mid-nineteenth century. Lord Aberdeen got Britain into it, then bungled it and got fired in the middle of it. That's the usual version of events. The author thinks Aberdeen got a rough deal. It might be of interest to those who are already interested in British history of the first half of the nineteenth century. Mount seems to assume that the reader does already know a lot about it. He drags in a lot of celebrities as peripheral characters, which is ok if you've heard of the celebrities. For example he introduces a character who turns out to be Lord Palmerston, which might be intriguing if you know who Palmerston was. One of the best parts is an appendix where he explains the history. There's a lot of historical parallels to be explored, and maybe a straightforward biography would have made a better book.

Potatoes

It's about a writer researching for an article about potatoes. That makes it one of those books where saying what it's about doesn't make it sound very appealing. He goes to Berlin to meet with a prominent ex-East German ("Ossie") potato expert but finds he is dead, tries to get access to his important research on potato flavors, and is "helped" by some questionable characters, who mostly turn out ot be very far from helpful, especially the Ossies, who are, apparently, a breed apart. He is a kind-hearted sensitive man with a vein of cynicism that is not enough to prevent him from being victimized in a series of misadventures that are half comic and half tragic. The translator, Peter Tegel, does a wonderful and unobtrusive job that even makes the translated jokes quite funny. As potato-centered books go it's more entertaining than the last one I read (Cormac O'Grada's "Black '47"). There are no graphs or tables.

A Ramble through the enigma of re-united Berlin

Timm's novel provides a wonderful romp through the physical and psychological space that is/was newly re-united Berlin. The action takes place at the exact time the Bulgarian artist Christo wrapped the Reichstag building.Timm's protagonist, a journalist and essayist from Munich, comes to Berlin looking for help on an article on the humble German potato. He is soon hot on the trail of East Germany's leading potato expert, who (unfortunately) is now dead. Our hero traverses the city in search of the deceased scholar's research, largely forgotten and shelved away, like so much of the cultural detritus that is East Germany's cultural and intellectual heritage. The reader will delight in his madcap adventures as the West German discovers how nonsenical, if not absurd, life in eastern Berlin can be. The novel's central plot may be weak, but it largely serves as a device for enabling the essayist to criss-cross city, experiencing the chaos and fragmentation of post-reunification Berlin. Anyone who has spent time in Berlin should read this novel. It's well worth it. For others, it may be just a bit confusing without knowing something of the city's physical and cultural geography.