Rogue Male

Edition: Folio Society (2013), Hardcover, 172 pages.
Original publication date: 1939

From the FS site: "Rogue Male opens, literally, with a cliffhanger. The narrator has just been thrown off the edge of a precipice and is clinging on by the fingertips. He survives the fall and struggles through a muddy stream before climbing a tree, there to hide from the uniformed figures searching below. It transpires that he has just tried to assassinate the leader of an unnamed country with a hunting rifle. There follows a fast-paced cat-and-mouse chase across Europe as the hero struggles to evade the authorities and carry out his mission – ‘to do justice where no other hand could reach.’"

When we have that first vision of the unnamed narrator, show more he's been submitted to interrogation under brutal torture (the fingertips in question have had the nails removed) and conveniently left for dead. The novel is in the form of a memoir, which he writes while in hiding to try to make sense of events and also as a way to avoid giving way to insanity. Well he might make that effort too, because his solution to staying away from his pursuers is to literally burrow himself underground somewhere in Dorset, where he spends weeks and months in a hole in the ground not much larger than the size of a coffin; living off tins of food in his own filth and stench and unable to go aboveground or show himself anywhere as a wanted man. The narrative is completely gripping, and though we never find out the identity of the narrator, nor that of the leader he may or may not have had the intention of assassinating, we are privy to his musings as he takes us through the course of events which has led him to his present situation, and his reflections on what his true motivations might have been.

Other than a ripping good yarn, one thing that greatly appealed to me about this short novel was that it allowed me to completely put aside my own sense of morality and prejudices and enter into the mind of a man with almost complete opposite background, world experience and choice pastimes. Here is a very wealthy man from an ancient aristocratic English family, educated in the best 'public' schools and then at an Oxbridge college, whose favourite activity is traveling the world to track and kill 'big game'—incidentally, according to wikipedia, the term 'Big Game' is historically associated with the hunting of Africa's Big Five game; lions, African elephants, Cape Buffaloes, leopards and rhinos—iin other words, animals now on the verge of extinction. I'm sure I don't need to point out that as an animal lover who eats meat most infrequently, I cannot abide the idea of hunting as a leisure activity. But Household's writing grabbed hold of me from the beginning, and I was immediately concerned with this man staying alive and living to tell his tale. And when his true motivations came to the fore, was even be able to sympathize with him. Also didn't hurt that according to some, the leader he had in his sights, finger on the trigger was no other than Hitler, "though the anonymous narrator does not consider himself an assassin but ‘a sportsman who couldn’t resist the temptation to stalk the impossible.’"

Excellent and strongly recommended.

The Folio edition, needless to say, is simply gorgeous. The illustrations throughout always cross over the full spread, sometimes with the text wrapping around the element on the page facing the main picture, a great visual device for a book about a man on the run. show less

Intense story of a sportsman who has to go on the run after narrowly escaping death at the hands of a foreign power who believes he was attempting to assassinate their leader (never named, but as this book was published in 1939, Hitler is the obvious real-life parallel.) This is a claustrophobic first-person story where the narrator's only trusted friend is a cat, and he holes up in a grave-like burrow for weeks on end. While there is considerable action, the story is told at a slow, highly detailed pace. What makes the book so fascinating, besides the extremely literate prose of author Household, is the self-discovery the protagonist makes during the course of the novel. While outwardly a tale of suspense, this is even more a show more psychological study of a man awakening to a new (truer?) knowledge of his own identity. show less

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household is a incredible adventure story. A professional hunter slips into an unnamed country, stalks and aims at it’s dictator leader. He is caught, tortured, and thrown off a cliff but survives and manages to make his way back to England only to find he isn’t in the clear yet as agents of this unknown country are on his trail. The book is a first class survival story, as the protagonist now goes into hiding in rural Dorset, living in an expanded rabbit’s burrow with a feral cat as company.

What makes this book different from a straight adventure story is the reflections of the main character. With a lot of time on his hands and with paper to write, he keeps a journal and records his thoughts and show more philosophies. It seems as if this is all that keeps him human as he is living like an animal and using animal-like skills to engage in a battle of wits with his stalker. As the story unfolds the reason he hunted the dictator is revealed to have been a private act of revenge rather than a patriotic strike for freedom.

I had some prior knowledge of this book from the 1941 movie called Man Hunt. This movie was based on Rogue Male but other than the opening sequence was very different. In the novel, it is clear that the unnamed country is Germany and the dictator is Hitler even though this is never put in black and white. The movie, filmed during the war, glorified this attempt on Hitler’s life and patriotism was front and center.

For me, Rogue Male was an excellent read. The author manages to tell a story of depth without over writing. It is simply told, concise and vivid. I thoroughly enjoyed this taunt, tense thriller. show less

I had heard of this first when I ran across the 1976 or so movie with Peter O'Toole on late-night TV -- and found it so chilling that I had to turn it off. And then I never knew what had happened! Then caught the 1942 version of it ("Man Hunt"), which was a good noirish movie, although (understandably) propagandistic, since it was filmed during the war. Household's book was first published in 1939, and it's a first-person chronicle by an unnamed narrator of what he describes as a "sporting stalk" of a famous dictator personage in a country adjacent to Poland. Well, a bit of a no-brainer to figure out who that might have been in 1938/39... He's caught, tortured, and left for dead -- until the evildoers figure out that he survived and is show more making his way home. It's a great chase novel that turns into a game of wits as the narrator (a famous sportsman) turns to his hunting skills to protect himself from his pursuers and literally goes to ground in a burrow in Dorset. Even knowing the story, there were times when I found myself holding my breath.

This isn't a great, classic suspense novel, and I wouldn't have thought it warranted an NYRB seal of approval, but it's a brisk and entertaining read that sometimes requires the reader to suspense incredulity and remind him/herself that this was the 1930s, when the narrator might reasonably not want to have taken what appear today to be the logical steps to protect himself by going public. The final third of the book contains some intriguing twists, as the narrator admits some things to us for the first time -- and realizes some things about himself, his motivations and his next steps. That added some nuance which I don't recall being part of the more straightforward movie versions. 3.8 stars, recommended. show less

At the start of WWII, an English sportsman crosses over from Poland and gets very close to assassinating an European dictator. Even though at that point the nationality of that dictator is unknown, the following events leave only Germany as a possibility (Russia is to away for the trip home with the ship. Technically speaking he claims that he was just trying to see if he can get close enough, just as a sportsman - but a man with an optical gun pointed to the head of a country will never believed when he says so. And when he is caught, he is tortured and left for dead (in a pretty inventive way) but he beats all odds and survives. And at this point the novel opens. It takes very little time for the secret services in the country to show more realize what happened and to start the hunt.

But behind the hunt (which is executed very well - both in the enemy territory and in England) there is another story - the story of a shattered love, the story of what the main protagonist was not ready to admit even to himself, the story of what he was doing at that forest with a gun. It's a complex tale - with a thriller at the top, masking the psychological novel under it.

If someone expects high speed chase with cars and trains and whatsnot around Europe, they will remain disappointed. Most of the story is stationary; the only movement is to get everyone in position before the real game begins. And throughout most of the story, there is an easy way out - a way that the unnamed protagonist does not want to take. Because his life is not the most important thing in the world.

The protagonist narrates the story - the book is his diary. That centers the view that we can see and leave a lot of actions unseen until they start influencing the protagonist. And it is the diary's writer choice to remain unnamed - even if his name will probably save him, it is not how that game is played. At the end of the novel is somewhat open-ended - if it was written nowadays, I would expect the second novel within a year. But the story is told, it is just that there is the possibility for something else happening later (and when it was written, it was really open-ended - with the war still going and the dictator still alive).

It is a marvelous little novel - part thriller (imagine a current action movie chase minus the cars), part spy novel (because there is no other explanation for some of the protagonist action), part psychological suspense story that will become so popular in the decades since the writing of the novel. I will definitely check some other books from the Household.

Edition notes: I read this novel in the edition published by Folio Society in 2013. Rooney's choice to illustrate the book in black and white fits the mood of the novel. The page and a half illustrations are showing the vastness of the landscape (each of the full page illustrations have a small part on the facing page, needed to close the picture and provide the detail that make the picture part of the novel. I am not very good with art - but in that book, the art complimented the story without repeating it (while at the same time still showing pictures from the novel itself). show less

Warning: this review contains spoilers.

****

This ended up being a speedy, page-turning thriller, despite the fact that the book is divided into three longish sections with no chapter breaks in any of the sections. We begin with a man on the run following torture and imprisonment. His crime was to act on a curious impulse and see if he could get close enough to a European dictator to shoot him, just for the hell of it. But for a change in wind, he might have succeeded, and that would have changed the whole story. As it is, he's had his fingers mangled, an eye smashed, and has been dropped off a cliff and left for dead. The rest of the book chronicles his efforts to evade detection by the agents of the dictator's country and to avoid show more getting any of his friends mixed up in his predicament.

And while he did spend most of his time living off the land, I appreciated his refraining from describing in graphic detail any animals he killed, particularly the adorable rabbits in the countryside where he hid out. I also loved Asmodeus, the cat, and was horrified by what happened to him.

Not sure whether I needed the postscript at the end of the book -- the story on its own is solid and held my interest most keenly. I'd recommend it if you like a good thriller about one man against the elements. show less

In 1939, British writer Geoffrey Household imagined how a lone sniper might attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler at his Bavarian vacation home near Berchtesgaden. Two years later, anti-Nazi German director Fritz Lang -- now exiled to Hollywood -- filmed the story as 'Man Hunt'. And three years after that, officers in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) drafted a plan to kill Hitler, seemingly based on this story. Life does indeed imitate art.

Household's book is a great story, far superior to John Buchan's thrillers like The 39 Steps. It follows what happens to the assassin, who is a big game hunter, after he is captured by the dictator's guards, tortured and then escapes back to England. One is reminded of Frederick Forsyth's 'Day of show more the Jackal' as this book too goes into minute detail about how one might kill a world leader and get away with it. Unlike the later films (and Operation Foxley, the secret SOE plan) in the book the assassin is not named, nor is his target. Household later confirmed in an interview that he intended it to be Hitler all along, but left open the possibility that it could have been Stalin too.

A great read. show less