Review: The Flight

The Flight, by Brian Malessa

My video on the subject was terrible; and so here I am, with a full written review.
     A chilling, moving book on a rarely touched-upon subject, The Flight is perhaps one of my favourite books. Malessa's debut is ambitious in principle; representing the plight of the population of East Prussia in the early 1940s as they were forced to evacuate, across Nazi Europe. It flips the tables; no longer are the Nazis the evil boogeymen of other fiction. But the true skill soon appears; it doesn't glorify the Nazis, or try to apologise for them. It exposes the humanity on both sides; the cold, steel-edged humanity that drives our protagonists forth.
     Ida is a mother living on the main peninsula in East Prussia. Her husband is a soldier in the German army; her oldest son is in the Hitler Youth. When Operation Barabarossa backfires, the Russian Armies take an early revenge on East Prussia, and Ida and her two other children are forced to flee across Germany.
     The last few chapters of the book deal with the circumstances post-war, with Ida and her husband being stuck on either side of the divide between the Soviet Germany and the Western Allies. The end of the book is truely heartbreaking, for reasons I won't go into, but I think serves to reflect the book's main themes.
     The passage of time is quite interesting. When the atmosphere is light and peaceful, as near the beginning, one can often find that several months go past per paragraph. When the stakes become higher, time seems to slow down and this really improves the effectiveness of the work.
     This book is a well-researched, well-written piece of historical fiction that does justice to the events it describes, and that is perhaps why it is my favourite.

Thanks.