Henning Boëtius (1939–2022)

As a rule, I don't enjoy books that mess around with the time line, but in this case it works.

This book sat on my bookshelf for the longest time, and survived several cullings of books that I removed from my collection. I would look at it and think, "You're never going to read this, you should remove it." But then I would put it back on the shelf. Then, two days ago, I decided, "Give it 2o pages, if you're not hooked by then give it away." What on earth made me wait so long?

I loved the show more description of sailing and its relationship to flying a zeppelin airship. The story kept me in its grip and never did I find the technical descriptions boring or difficult to understand. This book is a keeper. This Hindenberg disaster happened five years before I was born, but I grew up with it as a recent past, shocking, terrible disaster. Next to the bombing of Pearl Harbour, and the kidnapping of the Lindenberg baby it was the most traumatic event of life at the time.

Boetius' book centers around the lives of two men - one a passenger, one a crewman. Their lives are intertwined from the beginning, little do they know it. Boetius also formulates a thoroughly plausible explanation of how - and why - the disaster occurred. show less

If I had to describe this book in one word, the word I would choose would most likely be confused.

It seems to struggle to string it's narrative together in a compelling manner, at times it bogs down in historical minutiae of the Hindenburg, yet in others it takes broad sweeping strokes to cover the surrounding history. It's quite unfortunate as the blurb made it seem like it was going to be quite a good story, instead we start off in summer 1947, skip forward winter 1948, then all the way show more back to 1919, forward to 1936 where the bulk of the story then runs in chronological order, and it is the end of this section which I found to be the most interesting of all, then it skips forward again to 1948 resuming where the winter 1948 section left off.

I felt like the book really would have benefited from a straight forward chronological order without all the skipping around.

Overall, it was an alright story and it will certainly fill some time in, or dare I say even be interesting to those with an interest in the Hindenburg, however largely I'd say the author missed the mark.

I'd also say the blurb writer who called it "A remarkable thriller, a great discovery" needs to look at more historical fiction to find out was a remarkable thriller really is. This was neither remarkable nor particularly thrilling. show less

A hidden gem...Empfehlung

De met de schrijfster Christa Hein ('Een vrouw uit Riga') getrouwde Duitse auteur (1939) staat bekend om zijn romanbiografieën en misdaadromans. Boëtius verwerkt het verhaal van zijn vader, die als 'elevatorman' aan het hoogteroer zat van de Zeppelin 'Hindenburg' die op 6 mei 1937 in een geweldige vuurzee boven Lakehurst bij New York verging. De roman verknoopt de lotgevallen van twee overlevenden van de ramp en hun geliefden met elkaar, de Zweedse journalist Birger Lund en de van het show more Noord-Duitse eiland Föhr afkomstige elevatorman Edmund Boysen. Zwaar getraumatiseerd poogt Lund na de oorlog Boysen op te sporen, om de ware toedracht van het gebeuren te achterhalen. De waanzinnige situatie in het voor- en naoorlogse Duitsland drijft beklemmend naar boven en de 'meeloper' Boysen kan uiteindelijk instemmen met Lunds verbluffende sabotagetheorie: Hitler geeft opdracht de 'Hindenburg' zo spectaculair mogelijk en politiek effectief in brand te steken als een fantastisch signaal voor de oorlog! Overdadige technische details maken deze goed geschreven en interessante roman wat minder toegankelijk. show less