Night of the Amazons

Combining fiction and fact in an expressionist novel replete with black humor, German author Rosendorfer ( The Architect of Ruins ) considers the rise and fall of the Third Reich as personified in the story of one man: Christian Weber, an actual historical figure. Weber was a street brawler and barroom bouncer whose intimacy with Hitler helped him become the Nazi boss of Munich. Throughout the book, Rosendorfer intersperses comments by the narrator, who came of age in the decade after the WW II, with conversations between pairs of characters--Jews, middle-aged, middle-class Germans, prostitutes--to depict society's changing reactions to Hitler, the Nazi regime and Weber himself. The narrative's highlight is a powerfully grotesque description of ``The Night of the Amazons,'' a summer festival Weber staged annually from 1936 to '38 that climaxed with the appearance on horseback of women clad only in sandals and cardboard helmets. The narration serves as a counterpoint to Weber's seamy biography, implicitly warning readers in the age of German reunification that the slide towards totalitarianism can be frighteningly easy. ( Jan. )