Possibly the most American German novel, style-wise, I've ever read. Hemingway isn't just a character in the story (as are Salinger and Bukowski), Kopetzky also emulates him quite well during some parts of this. In other parts, it's written like an American adventure novel.

The novel is set in different times/settings and they didn't all convince me. 1944: The main character, John Glueck, is an US-American soldier with German roots, who joins the psychological warfare unit of the army in the second world war to fight against the Nazis. He's content knowing he's fighting the good fight even though the methods are questionable at times. 1971: Glueck is in prison, awaiting trial - treason and whistleblowing - and writing his memoirs. So what happened to make Glueck so disillusioned, he'd turn against the American government? The Vietnam war.

The beginning and the ending of the novel were interesting, but the middle part dragged a lot. The descriptions of war didn't work for me. Generally, I find novels and movies depicting war to be very hard to handle, but this story was so constructed and didn't feel "real" at all, that I found it very easy to handle. On the flip side, the war scenes were also boring to read and didn't reach me emotionally at all. The political aspects and the comparisons of the second world war and the Vietnam war were more interesting. I considered dropping this novel in the middle when my eyes kept glazing over, but I'm glad I didn't, since it picked up again.