In the Presence of Mine Enemies [Anglais] [Poche]

An expansion of a novella of the same name, most of the first chapter is identical to its roots. We meet Heinrich Gimpel, who works in the army's budget analysis unit. His job is to predict whether the United States will pay all its tribute, and with how much fuss. Since the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht has multiple bases occupying the US, these calculations will determine whether panzers roll. His office mate, Willi Deutsch, performs a similar job, but while Heinrich keeps his head down and revels in calculations, Willi is loud, boisterous, and loves the ladies.

We'll meet many more people over the course of the book; Walter and Esther Stutzman; he's a software developer for Zeiss (which is Microsoft and Intel in one in this timeline), she's a part-time receptionist for a pediatrician. Susanna Weiss, an unmarried professor of Medieval English in a "kueche, kirch, kinder" world; and the Gimpel and Stutzman children. As in most Turtledove novels, there are several viewpoint characters. In this one, the rotating point of view moves among six people, but they all have the same secret: right in Berlin, the capital of the German empire, all are secretly Jews. Hidden in plain sight by their quietude, their fitting in, and by Walter Stutzman's hacking the geneological records database, their biggest fear is what their children will do when they are old enough to learn who they really are.

Did I mention how personal a story this is for Turtledove? Heinrich Gimpel clearly IS Harry Turtledove. Gimpel means "bullfinch" (Turtledove already writes historical novels under the German equivalent Turteltaub). Heinrich's wife is the former Lise Frank; Harry's wife is named Laura Frankos. Both couples have three daughters. And Heinrich, just like Ealstan in Derlavai, and so many other characters in his other novels, always does an excellent job, and values rational thought over emotional reactions. Lise is just as level-headed, but more empathetic, while oldest daughter Alicia is exactly like her dad. And the book begins with Alicia, at age ten, discovering that most of what she's learned in school is a complete lie.

Gimpel is one of those characters who cannot stay out of trouble no matter how hard he tries to. Willi Deutsch's wife Erika is determined to have an affair with Heinrich, no matter how often he refuses. Erika and her husband's marital spats are destined to splatter all over Gimpel. Heinrich also has his work profile raised uncomfortably high when the new Fuhrer seeks him out to decide whether to remove more German troops from the US. Everyone wants to talk politics with him, while all he wants to do is keep from being noticed.

We learn plenty about the German Reich through Alicia Gimpel. The only young viewpoint character, we overhear her school lessons in politics, geography, and anthropology (Aryan vs. Untermann). She observes that some of her classmates would do better at school if they didn't spend all their time watching the "televisor." (And even a frequently used wooden paddle on the butt doesn't change their actions.) Politics are a constant thrum throughout the novel. While this society was set up for leaders to lead and everyone else to cheerfully obey, the new Fuhrer is determined to change this. So what begins as a frightening analog of 21st century USA, with computers, television ads, and evening newscasts, soon morphs into 1989-91 Russia. Leader Buckliger begins questioning how things were always done, which threatens some and excites most others.

Reading any Turtledove novel always leads to bad puns and name remapping. The old fuhrer is named Kurt Haldweim, get it? The new fuhrer is named Buckliger, which means "hunchback." And since the latter half of the book was so suggetive of Moscow in 1991, I looked up hunchback in Russian; it's "gorbin." (Gorbachov + Putin?) While I can't equate the names Stolle and Yeltsin, it's pretty clear the mayor of Berlin is modeled after the one from Moscow.

Despite the too-rigid mapping of '91 Moscow to 2003 Berlin, this book is incredibly nuanced and detailed. The head of the KGB, whoops, the SS, will deal with a very determined hacker. Gimpel and his children are accused of being Jews and become unwilling guests of the Security Police. Offhand comments of death and destruction rained down on the US, Poland, Russia, and many other lands are far more chilling than many battle scenes could be. Warsaw-style ghettoes in New York and Los Angeles, mentioned in the same manner, also brought a shiver.

Read, enjoy, and be very glad for what did not happen.

It's 2009. The last of the WWII generation to become Fuhrer, Austrian-born Kurt Haldweim (guess who that is) has died, and a new, reform-minded Fuhrer has taken control. The six Jews who are the point of view characters in this stand-alone novel look on with hope which has been extinguished almost as thoroughly as their co-religionists as they look towards a new day when they might, just might, be able to live open lives. In the meantime, they must continue to face, and seemingly agree with, the unending anti-Jewish propaganda which lives on even though (as most Germans think) the Jews do not.

An interesting novel. Unfortunately, Turtledove quickly finds himself trapped behind the fact that characters in such a situation do NOT want exciting things happening to them, but to live quiet lives, and therefore the first two-thirds of the book are very slow-moving. Perhaps the worst moments are the repeated bridge games (a hommage to Heinlein's "Farnham's Freehold"?) which go on for pages and pages, during which nothing much happens, and which are completely lost on the reader if you don't know much about bridge. Much of the rest is very reminiscent of certain events in Russia in recent years, together with a Yeltsin-like character.

Turtledove never ceases to amuse with interesting parallels from our own reality (a play is mentioned like "The Producers" but focusing on Churchill and Stalin, the Czech delegation at one point is led by "a playwright" (Havel), and, of course, the Haldweim-Waldheim parallel).

In case you're interested, the title is taken from Psalm 23.

But ultimately, Turtledove is too much trapped by his own conception to make much of this alternate history.

Recommended to those who have already read Turtledove. If you are new to alternate history, go read Turtledove's "The Guns of the South." It's much, much better.

Also, as someone else said, there really isn't a lot that happens in this book. I was hoping for some more action. There are way too many bridge scenes, and if you don't know how to play bridge, you won't understand these.

I always find myself buying Turtledove's books even though I can't stand his style because his ideas are interesting. So this book has some things going for it, but be prepared to sift through a lot of filler.