Mendelssohn Is On The Roof Summary

On the roof of prague s concert hall julius schlesinger aspiring ss officer is charged with the removal of the statue of the jew mendelssohn but which one is he.

Mendelssohn is on the roof summary. Mendelssohn is on the roof by jiri weil translated by marie winn. Remembering his course on racial science schlesinger instructs his men to pull down the statue with the biggest nose. The book took 15 years to write. We see how quickly individuals turn against each other feel forced or reduced to report others.

It is an exploration of the many forms of corruption in nazi occupied czechoslovakia and embeds historical events such as the assassination of reinhard heydrich in prague in 1942 among fictional stories concerning the holocaust nazi careerism and the rise of nazism. Farrar straus giroux. Mendelssohn is on the roof is a novel by jiří weil written in 1959 and first translated into english by marie winn in 1991. In mendelssohn is on the roof we see the ripple effects that such a ludicrous decree can have.

This is the bleakly comic strand of mendelssohn is on the roof highlighting the banality of evil its operation through ordinary and often incompetent bureaucratic processes and people. Above these loom the unnamed head of the central bureau responsible for managing the.