Translated by Clarissa Botsford
Review by Rob Spence
The publisher’s blurb for Giaime Alonge’s first novel describes it as “a masterful blend of fact and fiction”, and that’s certainly accurate in the sense that the narrative is fully grounded in verifiable historical events. Alonge is a professor of film studies, and there is definitely a sense of the cinematic about the way he approaches storytelling in this tale, which interweaves two plotlines, one set in the second world war, and one in 1982.
The novel’s chapters are short, and at first the reader might be slightly dazzled by the rapidly changing locations and cast of characters. In the first fifty pages, for instance, we move from the Russian front line in the war, to Mexico in 1982, to Litzmannstadt in 1941, to Prague, to London, Berlin and Rome. In each place, we are introduced to different characters of greater or lesser importance in the ensuing narrative, which inexorably begins to draw these disparate threads together to produce an engaging thriller-like tale of vengeance and betrayal.
The link between the two timelines lies in the Holocaust. Lichtblau, a Nazi scientist, conducts experiments on Jewish prisoners, two of whom, Libowitz and Epstein, survive the war and are united decades later in the hunt for their captor. Lichtblau, having survived the war, is one of the Nazi scientists scooped up by the Americans. Latterly, he has been engaged in the dirty CIA-funded operation in South America. His war-time laboratory in a commandeered German castle where he experimented with LSD has been replaced by a fortress in Honduras, the centre of the drug- and gun-running enterprise he runs under his new identity.
The novel divides the two plotlines equally, so the reader is immersed in the horrors of the Final Solution, as well as the morally bankrupt dealings of the USA in their support for the Contras in the Reagan era. On one level, this can be read as a typical thriller, in which a targeted fugitive is hunted down, and there are several scenes where the standard tropes of that genre figure here: shootouts, bombings, hair’s-breadth escapes, and so on. But the overarching historical context lends it more depth, and enables it to move beyond the confines of genre.
I think, pace the publisher’s assertion, there is some awkwardness about the way in which Alonge locates his narrative in its historical setting. Clearly, some background detail is essential to provide a sense of authenticity to the action, but too often, this seems rather as if imported from another text. These passages are sometimes quite lengthy, and written in a contrasting style to the main narrative. Thus, for example, the Wannsee conference, which infamously put in motion the logistics of the Holocaust, is introduced by a long paragraph which might have been an extract from a standard history, including passages such as this: “The conference was supposed to have been held on December 9, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had forced them to postpone. Heydrich had implied that the Führer had made the decision to settle the Jewish question definitively at the end of the summer. The declaration of war on the United States had made implementing the project even more urgent. For the time being, the Reich had no way to fight America directly, but it could strike down its agents in Europe.” These passages, which seem rather intrusive, slow down the narrative pace. Having said that, once the reader is returned to the fictional story, the level of engagement is high.
Alonge presents the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis in uncompromising terms, so this is by no means a comfortable read. And the title? It comes from a conversation between Lichtblau, and the old-school baron whose castle he has appropriated. It’s a fencing term, says the baron. “You need to feel the blade as if it were an extension of your arm. The French call it le sentiment du fer, a feel for the iron.” The fusion of the weapon and the person, blurring the distinction between the human and the implement of destruction, seems an apt metaphor for what happens in both timelines.
Rob Spence’s home on the web is at robspence.org.uk
Giaime Alonge, The Feeling of Iron, trans. Clarissa Botsford, (Europa Editions, 2025), 443 pp., 978-1-78770-583-8, paperback.
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