Reuss follows up the antic infantilism of The Wasties
(2002) with what might be called a documentary historical. At the novel's center is the real-life German-Jewish novelist and playwright Max Mohr; exiled from Germany in 1934, he chose to emigrate to China, leaving his wife, Käthe, and daughter, Eva, at their Bavarian home, and working as a doctor (for which he was trained) as China's war with Japan raged. The book is Reuss's explicit attempt to write Mohr back into the historical record and to understand his choices. To that end, he includes 47 actual photographs of Mohr, his family and their surroundings (some of which Reuss interprets), and Reuss also foregrounds his own place in the work. After an extended second-person address, Reuss tells his character Mohr, "I say you, but I mean me. In novels, personal pronouns can be misleading. This is not an easy idea to express, and some will call the notion absurd. But why not? Why can't I be you? Or him or her?" The results are mixed as a novel, but Reuss succeeds in giving vivid shape to Mohr's life—the major events (including possible WWII spy intrigue in China) and the mundane (taking foxglove to keep his pulse regular). If not a man in full, the book contains a man kaleidoscopic.(May)
