|
This item may be
Check for Availabilityout of stock. Click on the button below to search for this title in other formats.  This title in other editionsWinnie and Wolf
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Winnie and Wolf is the story of the remarkable relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years between the two world wars, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner House in Bayreuth. Winifred, an English girl, was brought up in an orphanage and married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germanys most controversial genius. She is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, and a Teutonic patriot. In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hopes for the coming of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist and redeemer. In 1923, they meet their Parsifal—a wild-eyed Viennese opera fanatic named Adolf Hitler. He has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street-corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who truly believes in him. Both have known the humiliation of poverty and a deep anger at the society that excluded them. They find in each other an unusual kinship that begins with a passion for opera. In A. N. Wilsons boldest and most ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is brilliantly recreated, and forms the backdrop to this incredible bond, which ultimately reveals the remarkable capacity of human beings to deceive themselves. A. N. Wilson is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist. He lives in North London. Winnie and Wolf is the story of the remarkable relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years between the two world wars, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner House in Bayreuth. Winifred, an English girl, was brought up in an orphanage and married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germanys most controversial genius. She is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, and a Teutonic patriot. In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hopes for the coming of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist and redeemer. In 1923, they meet their Parsifal—a wild-eyed Viennese opera fanatic named Adolf Hitler. He has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street-corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who truly believes in him. Both have known the humiliation of poverty and a deep anger at the society that excluded them. They find in each other an unusual kinship that begins with a passion for opera. In A. N. Wilsons boldest and most ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is brilliantly recreated, and forms the backdrop to this incredible bond, which ultimately reveals the remarkable capacity of human beings to deceive themselves. "The Winnie in A. N. Wilsons new novel, Winnie and Wolf, is Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law of the composer Richard Wagner, who died in 1883. Winnie was apparently a woman of formidable vigor. For many years, she ran the opera house in Bayreuth—custom-built by Wagner to stage his works—raising money and managing the outsize egos of the world-class talent she attracted there. She was also a lifelong anti-Semite. Wolf is Adolf Hitler. In Winnie and Wolf, Wilson imagines that child being secretly placed in a Bayreuth orphanage until a man we know only as Herr N. is persuaded, with his wife, to adopt her. It is not clear when Herr N. realizes the childs true identity, but in 1960, living alone in Communist East Germany, he writes an extremely long letter telling his story to his adopted daughter, who has since emigrated to America. Winnie and Wolf purports to be that letter . . . [A] marvelous, sweeping, darkly funny and ultimately tragic novel."—Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review "Better known as a novelist, British writer A.N. Wilson is also a biographer of such literary figures as Tolstoy and C.S. Lewis. In his latest book, he draws upon both strengths as he conjures up two real-life characters, Adolf Hitler and Winifred (known as 'Winnie') Wagner, composer Richard Wagner's British-born daughter-in-law and Hitler acolyte. But Wilson being Wilson, he does not stop there: He lets his prodigious imagination roam into uncharted territory, where his protagonists not only have a passionate affair but produce a daughter (who also takes the name Winifred) in 1932, only months before the Führer becomes chancellor. The result is a rich confection of atmosphere and action, full of detail—cultural, political and sexual—and much fancy. Winnie and Wolf takes the form of a letter to the spawn of this unholy affair, penned in 1960s East Germany by a nameless onetime functionary of the Wagner household who is the younger Winifred's adopted father. The manuscript is discovered in her possession upon her death in 2006 in Seattle, where she has been living under the name Winifred Hiedler, a pretty clear indication that she believes the story contained in it. This somewhat creaky device enables Wilson to don his biographer's hat and pen some footnotes along the way, although it must be said to his credit that he does not overindulge in this sport. This elaborate construction allows the adoptive father narrator to tell his story with the benefit of hindsight regarding the extent of Hitler's genocide, while also refracting his tale through the lens of his bitter experiences in Communist East Germany. And so along the way, he gives a passionate personal view of his native Germany from the 1920s into the '60s. Perhaps the best part of Winnie and Wolf is its evocation of the early 20th century strange operatic world of the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, ground zero of all things Wagnerian. Married while still in her teens to Wagner's gay son, Siegfried, Winnie becomes more of a Wagner than any of the blood family and is the prime mover of the operatic enterprise even before the early death of her husband."—Martin Rubin, Los Angeles Times "The Hitler we are introduced to in A. N. Wilson's oddly provocative novel is a 'polite, charming, opera "geek" who remembered the names of contraltos in long-gone provincial productions,' not a monstrous mass murderer. This extraordinarily bland Hitler emerges from a letter purportedly written in the early 1960s by Herr N. to his adopted daughter."—Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe "A bold, ambitious piece of fiction"—Terry Eagleton, The Guardian (UK) "Winnie is Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner, composer of 19th-century operas. Wolf is Adolph Hitler. And this is a fictional portrayal of their romance, told through the eyes of Herr N., secretary to Siegfried Wagner, Winnie's husband. For lovers of opera and history, this novel is a glorious invention. Each chapter uses one of Wagner's operas to frame the development of the relationship between the young Adolph, so good to Winnie's children, and the English-born woman who becomes director of the Bayreuth Opera Festival. Music, philosophy, mythology and politics support the love story, complicated by the narrator's longing and love for Winnie. Perhaps the most compelling theme of this brilliant novel is the way that anti-Semitism linked the Furhrer, the composer and his daughter-in-law. Fascinating, too, was the way that Winnie overlooked the fiendish behavior of her lover. Finally, driving the reader along is the mystery of the child born to Winnie and Wolf, larger-than-life characters in their own tragic opera."—Kathleen Daley, The Star-Ledger (Newark) "Wilson must be the hardest working man in British letters, not to mention the most prolific. Whether it is his early Christian-themed novels of the five-volume Lampitt Chronicles series or the half-dozen other novels or the many biographies and other nonfiction works, he rarely fails to satisfy. Nor does he here . . . Winnie and Wolf is a remarkable effort . . . Wilson pulls off a daring risk in seeking to humanize an unspeakable monster by giving him a domestic life and a mundane past, because he realizes that to explain is not to exonerate."—Roger K. Miller, The Denver Post "If A. N. Wilsons novel Winnie and Wolf doesnt alienate readers with its heavy allusions to German history and music, it might drive them away with its premise: The book chronicles the putative love affair between the grotesquely cuddly Adolf 'Wolf' Hitler and Winnie Wagner, the opera-managing daughter-in-law of the infamous composer. But anyone who sticks with this story will witness Wilson, whose biographical subjects run from Tolstoy to Jesus, beautifully pull off a Wagnerian feat: Hes written a complex novel about history and art, and imbued his despicable characters with emotions that are believable (even when theyre loathsome). The story is told in retrospect, in the 1980s, by Herr N——, a onetime Wagner family assistant, true believer in the Master (the composer, not the genocidal mastermind) and classically unreliable narrator. Now marooned in East Germany, N—— revisits the prewar glory days in Bayreuth, his hometown and the site of Wagners self-built concert hall. N—— is writing an extended letter to his adopted daughter, Senta, in an attempt to explain the truth about her birth and parentage (look to the title for clues). Wrestling with Winnies role in Wolfs rise—‘love and death, inextricably mixed—the narrator skirts around his own culpability in the destruction of his family and country, and of the Jews and ‘pansies who once peopled Bayreuths musical sphere. 'To say one has been bewitched is not to deny the power of whatever magic has worked the enslavement,' N—— writes in one of his frequent digressions about Wagners work. Hes purportedly commenting on a plot point in the Ring cycle. But he also invokes, with chilling restraint, Wagners egomaniacal devotion to his own work, as well as Winnies—and so many Germans—love for Hitler."—Elizabeth Isadora Gold, Time Out New York "The title refers to Winifred Wagner, the English wife of Richard Wagner's son Siegfried, and Wolf, the self-chosen nickname if Adolf Hitler. The novel is constructed as a sort of confession and memoir written by an unnamed secretary and admirer of Winnie's, meant for his adopted daughter, to inform her that her birth parents are none other than Winnie and Wolf. This startling and complicated premise provides the framework of a novel that is at one an interesting biographical portrait of Winifred, a history of the rise of Hitlerism, a thesis on Wagner's works and an open discussion on all manners on philosophical thought. And those are just the major themes! Side stories, parenthetical references, essays, minor acts and subplots abound. There is much to appreciate in this book, its portrait of Germany in the twenties and thirties for example . . . The sections concerning Richard Wagner and his family are both interesting and informative."—Ken Kreckel, Historical Novels Review "In his highly imaginative novel Winnie and Wolf, prolific British novelist and historian A.N. Wilson has taken an intriguingly dispassionate look at Hitler's inner circle. The novel, which came out in the U.K. last year, was nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Despite this high level of acclaim, readers may wonder why Wilson would bother taking a sober, realistic look at Hitler and thereby risk humanizing him. But among Wilson's 35 books is a biography of Jesus that is mostly about the impossibility of writing a biography of Jesus; Wilson is not one to back down from a challenge . . . Wilson's novel seizes on the Wagner family's intimacy with Hitler and re-creates the atmosphere of high culture and low deeds around Bayreuth, the site of a yearly festival of Wagner operas—and Hitler's favorite retreat—in a voice whose serious tone (backed by exhaustive research) lends remarkable credibility to the novel. Through the narration of Wagner's assistant, Wilson gives readers an unsettling inside look at a side of the über-fascist we have rarely dared to consider since the end of World War II—the opera lover who, despite the madness and destruction he unleashed on the world, was in the end still human, even if most would rather resign him from the human race . . . If Wilson makes Hitler seem less monstrous, that's part of his point. He doesn't do so in order to apologize for Uncle Wolf's atrocities, but to warn us against denial. Winnie and Wolf, though penned by a Brit, could be the last great cautionary tale of the Bush years, with their Patriot Acts, government surveillance and 'black sites.' In his passion to rescue Wagner's reputation from its association with Nazism, among other things, Wilson suggests that the Nazis saw what they wanted to see in his work (German nationalism) and reinterpreted it for their purposes. Unfortunately, this association has outlasted their brutal rule. Chillingly, Winnie and Wolf, in a complex, rich and ambitious fashion, shows us how easily a leader's charisma can distract both naive individuals like Winifred and entire nations from his faults and crimes, even as he leads us into chaos."—James Hannaham, Salon "Winnie is Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law; Wolf is Hitler. Their relationship is just one item in this fact/fiction hybrid, an appealing grab bag of impressions of the Bayreuth Festival, the Weimar Republic and much more . . . Wilson revels in contradictions, in Wagner's work as well as in his protagonists, while celebrating Wagner as 'a free creative spirit,' not shackled to any ideology."—Kirkus Reviews "Imagine a novel that makes Hitler, the 'Wolf' of this title, seem almost human. (The operative word here is almost.) A noted British novelist and biographer, Wilson interweaves a history of composer Richard Wagner's heirs and their involvement in the Third Reich with an account of the extraordinary relationship between Winifred Wagner-the composer's daughter-in-law-and the German dictator, referred to as Wolf when he spends time with the Wagner family and otherwise as H. After her husband's death, Winnie takes charge of productions at Wagner's Bayreuth and in time is drawn into the Führer's circle. This enthralling tale is recounted by an East German who served as secretary in the Wagner household during the days of the Weimar Republic and World War II and knew the family intimately well. The novel is in fact a manuscript he eventually sends to his émigré daughter in America that will reveal an all-but-unbelievable family secret. Wilson's erudition shines through on every page and enhances our understanding of this complex and sometimes depraved tale. Utterly compelling and essential for all informed readers."—Edward Cone, Library Journal Review:"Veteran British biographer and novelist Wilson's plodding latest concerns the private life of Adolf Hitler (Wolf) and his friendship and affair with Winnie, the daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner. The novel opens in 1925 and is composed by an unnamed secretary to Winnie's husband. Though weighted down by detailed discussions of philosophy and the opera that so inspired Hitler, the narrative at times hums with life. Wilson offers a new way of viewing the charismatic (though sweating and flatulent) leader, who appears to the Wagner family as the savior who will raise up a starving and humiliated interwar Germany and who 'made you feel that the struggle would not have been worth it unless it had gone too far.' Unfortunately, Wilson seems so intent on demonstrating the breadth of his knowledge and research that narrative technique feels like an afterthought. This dense and dry tale is unlikely to appeal to readers who aren't already at least armchair scholars of the era." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:The complicated premise of the novel "Winnie and Wolf" is that somewhere in a dank, lonely flat in East Germany, a widower — writing sometime after the year 1960 — constructs "an extended letter, or meditation, or memoir" for his adopted daughter, an accomplished musician who has seized an opportunity to defect to Sweden. The writer of this letter, whose name we never know, has startling news for... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Synopsis:"Winnie and Wolf" tells the story of the remarkable relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that takes place during the years between the two world wars, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner House in Bayreuth. Synopsis:Winnie and Wolf is the story of the extraordinary friendship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler in the Years between the First and Second World Wars. The girl who would become Winifred Wagner was raised in an orphanage and married, at the age of eighteen, to the gay son of composer Richard Wagner. As heiress to the country's most august cultural legacy, she grows up in the Wagner family compound, surrounded by the philosophers and composers who would define western European culture in the mid-twentieth century. In 1923, the Wagners met the man who would be their hero and hope for the future: a wild-eyed Viennese opera fanatic named Adolf Hitler. Almost immediately Winnie and Wolf struck up an intimate friendship. In A. N. Wilson's most bold and ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic comes to vivid life as the backdrop to this strange and powerful kinship. Synopsis:Winnie and Wolf is the story of the remarkable relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years between the two world wars, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner House in Bayreuth. Winifred, an English girl, was brought up in an orphanage and married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germany's most controversial genius. She is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, and a Teutonic patriot. In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hopes for the coming of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist and redeemer. In 1923, they meet their Parsifal--a wild-eyed Viennese opera fanatic named Adolf Hitler. He has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street-corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who truly believes in him. Both have known the humiliation of poverty and a deep anger at the society that excluded them. They find in each other an unusual kinship that begins with a passion for opera. In A. N. Wilson's boldest and most ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is brilliantly recreated, and forms the backdrop to this incredible bond, which ultimately reveals the remarkable capacity of human beings to deceive themselves. A. N. Wilson is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist. He lives in North London. Winnie and Wolf is the story of the remarkable relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years between the two world wars, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner House in Bayreuth. Winifred, an English girl, was brought up in an orphanage and married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germany's most controversial genius. She is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, and a Teutonic patriot. In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hopes for the coming of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist and redeemer. In 1923, they meet their Parsifal--a wild-eyed Viennese opera fanatic named Adolf Hitler. He has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street-corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who truly believes in him. Both have known the humiliation of poverty and a deep anger at the society that excluded them. They find in each other an unusual kinship that begins with a passion for opera. In A. N. Wilson's boldest and most ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is brilliantly recreated, and forms the backdrop to this incredible bond, which ultimately reveals the remarkable capacity of human beings to deceive themselves. The Winnie in A. N. Wilson's new novel, Winnie and Wolf, is Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law of the composer Richard Wagner, who died in 1883. Winnie was apparently a woman of formidable vigor. For many years, she ran the opera house in Bayreuth--custom-built by Wagner to stage his works--raising money and managing the outsize egos of the world-class talent she attracted there. She was also a lifelong anti-Semite. Wolf is Adolf Hitler. In Winnie and Wolf, Wilson imagines that child being secretly placed in a Bayreuth orphanage until a man we know only as Herr N. is persuaded, with his wife, to adopt her. It is not clear when Herr N. realizes the child's true identity, but in 1960, living alone in Communist East Germany, he writes an extremely long letter telling his story to his adopted daughter, who has since emigrated to America. Winnie and Wolf purports to be that letter . . . A] marvelous, sweeping, darkly funny and ultimately tragic novel.--Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review Better known as a novelist, British writer A.N. Wilson is also a biographer of such literary figures as Tolstoy and C.S. Lewis. In his latest book, he draws upon both strengths as he conjures up two real-life characters, Adolf Hitler and Winifred (known as 'Winnie') Wagner, composer Richard Wagner's British-born daughter-in-law and Hitler acolyte. But Wilson being Wilson, he does not stop there: He lets his prodigious imagination roam into uncharted territory, where his protagonists not only have a passionate affair but produce a daughter (who also takes the name Winifred) in 1932, only months before the Fuhrer becomes chancellor. The result is a rich confection of atmosphere and action, full of detail--cultural, political and sexual--and much fancy. Winnie and Wolf takes the form of a letter to the spawn of this unholy affair, penned in 1960s East Germany by a nameless onetime functionary of the Wagner household who is the younger Winifred's adopted father. The manuscript is discovered in her possession upon her death in 2006 in Seattle, where she has been living under the name Winifred Hiedler, a pretty clear indication that she believes the story contained in it. This somewhat creaky device enables Wilson to don his biographer's hat and pen some footnotes along the way, although it must be said to his credit that he does not overindulge in this sport. This elaborate construction allows the adoptive father narrator to tell his story with the benefit of hindsight regarding the extent of Hitler's genocide, while also refracting his tale through the lens of his bitter experiences in Communist East Germany. And so along the way, he gives a passionate personal view of his native Germany from the 1920s into the '60s. Perhaps the best part of Winnie and Wolf is its evocation of the early 20th century strange operatic world of the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, ground zero of all things Wagnerian. Married while still in her teens to Wagner's gay son, Siegfried, Winnie becomes more of a Wagner than any of the blood family and is the prime mover of the operatic enterprise even before the early death of her husband.--Martin Rubin, Los Angeles Times The Hitler we are introduced to in A. N. Wilson's oddly provocative novel is a 'poli About the AuthorA. N. WILSON is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in North London. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
Related SubjectsFiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
|
|||
|
|
||||
|
Follow us on...
|
||||
Don't Miss
