After Dachau

I picked up this book at 10:00 last night. It's now three AM, and I jusy finished reading it cover to cover.After Dachau is simply that good.A fan familiar with Daniel Quinn's other works, I was pleasantly surprised to find After Dachau to be a more carefully constructed novel than books like Ishmael. Instead of philosophy revealed through conversation, the reader is instead presented with an enormous metaphor.The premise is simple: a wealthy member of the idle rich persues his dream by volunteering as a researcher at an institute that studies reincarnation. Assigned to a case in New York, he soon finds that nothing is as it seems.Those who know Quinn's views of human history will likely be able to sniff out the metaphor early on, but After Dachau is accessable even to the average reader. Rather than a dystopic novel like "1984" or "Brave New World," which some of the reviews seem to liken After Dachau to, this book instead forces us to examine our past, rather than be concerned about our future (although a concern for the future logially follows examination of the past!)I can highly recommend this book. It has the potential to take its place among works like "1984" and "BNW" in classrooms across the world, and it likely should be afforded such an honor.Give it a read; you won't be disappointed.

I've read all of Daniel Quinns books except Dreamer. My favorite is Story of B as far as its ideas and realizations go. After Dachau is the best book by Daniel Quinn that I have read as just a story. He has proven himself as being a great thinker as well as a great writer with this book. Basically his books are MINDBLOWING. After Dachau goes even further by becomming almost disturbing to the reader. Even though the book starts out being about reincarnation it is really about alot more than this. Reincarnation is only the setting by which he brings out his other ideas and introduces the actual setting of the book. Things are not what they seem in the first half of the book. I don't think that it is necessary for people to have read any of Daniel Quinns other books to have read After Dachau. In fact, if you haven't read any of his other books then After Dachau will shock you even more. Believe me it's a real page turner; I read it in less than 48 hrs. If you like this book then you would probably also like Ishmael-Daniel Quinn's bestseller.Muslim B

Daniel Quinn is one of our most important novelists, working with the most important theme of today: how can we survive the insanity that is civilization? And this is Quinn's best book. I read it in one sitting, and for the last thirty pages I couldn't stop crying, even though I was on a crowded airplane. It's an extraordinary, and extraordinarily moving, book.

This new novel by Daniel Quinn is certainly unlike any of his previous books in that it isn't a work of cultural critique, but is still thematically connected to his past works, such as Ishmael and The Story of B. This is the story of a young man who is obsessed with reincarnation, who finally finds what he believes to be the real thing, and how this discovery shatters his view of the world and sends him on a daunting mission to share what he's found with others. If you've read Daniel's other books, when you finish this one you'll see that we have much in common with the young man at the end of this book. This book was enjoyable, readable, and thoughtful. I would recommend it to any Quinn fans as well as anyone who simply wants to read a great book.

This book is quite an imaginative work. I'm really into nightmarish utopian novels like Orwell's 1984, and After Dachau fits this category. I really don't want to give any of the plot away (I'll just say that the book's major surprize really jolts you and makes you think about...well...about ourselves and the way we live day to day and perceive our history and our role in that history) and so this is really just a cry for other people to read this great novel.