Published: 1976
Author: Ira Levin
A terrifying concept – but story hasn’t aged well
Nazis are great. No, wait, let me rephrase that. For an author in search of a baddie Nazis are great. Everyone knows immediately that the Nazi is the bad guy and that anyone opposing the Nazi has to be the good guy. There’s no need for long explorations of ideology or motivation. The Nazi is the bad guy and if you can include a famous Nazi in your story so much the better. That’s exactly what Ira Levin did with his 1976 novel The Boys From Brazil
The story begins with Auschwitz’s infamous Angel of Death, Dr Josef Mengele, sending 6 men on a mission across the world. They have to kill 94 men with similar characteristics. They are all civil servants and they have to be killed on specific dates over the coming two years. Mengele’s plan is recorded by a young American who contacts famous Nazi-hunter Yakov Liebermann (based on Simon Wiesenthal) but before he can fully explain what is happening he too is murdered. Liebermann investigates the call and uncovers a terrifying plan to establish a new Reich.
I’m torn on The Boys from Brazil. On one hand it was a fast-paced, very well-written and completely gripping. On the other hand though, it was very obvious that it was written 36 years ago. It’s not having a Nazi-hunter as the hero that is the problem, there are still people who dedicate their lives to bringing war criminals to justice and there are still plenty of war criminals alive who need to be brought to justice. Where the book really fails for a reader in 2012 is in the central scientific conceit. To avoid spoilers I won’t go into it too much, but we are told that the process in question will be routinely used by 1990. In 2012 it is not routinely in practice. With that one line the book is immediately aged and unreliable.
I know and totally accept that as a reader there is an element of understanding the period which the book is set in, however when the author has deliberately attempted to inject hyper-realism into the narrative by choosing a real person as his antagonist it makes it harder to suspend disbelief. The book was also immediately aged in 1979, just three years after publication, when Josef Mengele died.
I feel I’m being a little harsh on The Boys from Brazil. As a thriller it does its job really very well. Throughout the first half of the book I was desperate to find out why these 94 men were being targeted – what was the unifying factor? When the story develops it is with a sucker punch that offers real fear and terror. What if Mengele’s plan succeeds? The book more than entered my subconscious while I was reading it – I even dreamed about Gregory Peck as a Nazi (Peck played Mengele in the 1978 film adaptation). It’s not often that I can say that a book has got into my dreams but The Boys from Brazil certainly did. The final chapter genuinely terrified me and for that alone the book deserves real praise.
I would thoroughly recommend this book as a tense thriller with a truly frightening central concept. It’s a book of its time though and readers should recognise that when picking it up – get beyond that and you’ll be well rewarded.