The Right Hand of Sleep

Oskar Voxlauer is born in 1902 in the Austrian province of Carinthia. At age 16, he is drafted and sent to the Isonzo battlefront in the Dolomites. He deserts and wanders east, coming to a stop in the Ukraine. There, he spends the next twenty years on a communist colchose before returning to his small village in Carinthia. Together with Else, he moves to a lonely cottage where he works as a game keeper. It is now 1938.Germany is under Nazi rule, and the clouds drift towards Austria. The first messenger is Kurt, Else's cousin, who just returned from a two-year stay in Berlin. We now get the first run-ins between the former Bolshevik and the Nazi. More and more events come to a head. Austria becomes part of Germany, and Kurt shows up in the uniform of a SS officer. Else, guarding her own secrets, is placed in the middle between the two combattans.Wray wrote a magnificent book, not painting Oskar all good, nor Kurt all bad. It is a most plausible story that shows in clear and absolutely accurate detail what actually happened in those days. It is a textbook of history enveloped in a gripping story. That Wray makes mistakes in the naming of the SS ranks can easily be forgiven.This is a book for the younger generation to learn from, and for the older generation to rediscover. But I do wonder if there was a purpose to placing the action in Carinthia, probably the only western region nowadays under the government of a dedicated Nazi (Joerg Haider).

I have read many reviews about The Right Hand of Sleep and agree that it is a remarkable book. I found the most interesting our heroes realization that each form of government which he lived under was unsatisfactory starting with Germany in World War I, the Soviets following the war and finally the Nazis.Each denied the right of individual freedom. Nowhere did he as one lone individual manage to live without the system forcing its will on him. This man was not heroic nor did he wish to be; he wanted to live his life as he saw fit and "they" wouldn't let him. He posed no threat to any society except trying to be a person without boundaries. As we have found in our society, to some extent, the right to be different, to live a life outside the structure of philosophical and political restraints is difficult. The era of the 60's and 70's a case in point. After I finished I went back re-reading to delve into the tortured soul of the man.

When this book was given to me by a friend, who insisted on sitting next to me and watching while I began it, I read the first few paragraphs with trepidation. But as soon as I'd begun paying attention to the book and not to her, I realized I had something actually and truly incredible in my hands. The book simply opened up like a long, well-lit room filled with beautiful things, and drew me into it... really magical. I'd read the ecstatic review in the N.Y. Times, but I'm a born skeptic, and might never have read the book if my friend hadn't ambushed me with it. But she did, and I couldn't be more grateful. (Reading over this review, I realize it sounds like I'm on John Wray's payroll, so I will say it seemed the novel was cut down from a longer, more epic romance.) At any rate: I plunged into the novel in earnest that afternoon, and by the day after, I'd finished it completely and was sorry to find it over so soon. All in all, a shimmering, seductive, rustling ballgown of a book! My wife is reading it now and I find myself spending half my time at home peeking over her shoulder. Unforgettable!

This book is stunning. I wasn't really interested in the subject matter to tell the truth (don't care for historical novels in general - I'm more interested in how writers portray their own eras), but picked it up anyway because of the rave review in the NYTimes. Not really sure how he pulled it off, but it's an incredible and beautifully written book. I'd like to see what the author can do with a 21st century setting.

With this incredible debut novel, Wray leaps onto the literary stage fully mature, with a book so polished and assured that lovers of great writing will be celebrating this book for a long time. Wray shows no uncertainty. He has total control of his dramatic raw material--the rise of the Nazis in Austria, the Dollfuss Affair, and the Anschluss--and he never once stoops to sensationalism, never pushes any of those easy anti-Hitler buttons, never loses his characters in the intensity of the action, and never lets us forget that Hitler's rise was possible because ordinary people allowed it to happen. As the book opens, Oskar Voxlauer, is returning to Austria after twenty years in the Ukraine, where he has lived following his desertion from the horrors of Isonzo in World War I. His Socialist ideals have crumbled in the face of the communist reality, his lover has died, and he hasn't seen his family or his former home since he was seventeen. Unable to adjust to the changes which have taken place in Niessen, he finds work in the mountains as a gamekeeper for a Jewish friend, occasionally visiting the town and his somewhat dotty mother. Although Oskar finds love in the mountains with Else Bauer, he sometimes worries about his stability, suffering from occasional hallucinations and panic attacks and sometimes reacting violently to the injustices he sees and feels. He finds comfort in nature, even when the Nazi menace begins to threaten him, his relationship with Else, and his Jewish friend, Pauli Ryslavy. The lively third person narrative alternates wth Oskar's poignant and lengthy memories from his past--in the Ukraine and in the Austria of twenty years ago. When Else's cousin, Kurt Bauer, a high-ranking SS official, arrives, a new point of view opens, as Bauer, too, contributes reminiscences--about the growth of his Nazi commitment, the killing of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss, and his plans for a Nazi Austria. These interior monologues are incredibly powerful, highlighting the similarities and contrasts in the lives of Oskar and Bauer, both ordinary people who have been caught up in different political movements, committed to them for different reasons. Putting all the politics into perspective are some of the most lyrical and gorgeous extended descriptions of nature you'll ever read-including butterflies with their "parchment-like wingbeats," two fox cubs, one of which "held the spine of a trout in its teeth like a diadem," and even inkpot toads, with their "bright yellow undersides [that] bled a dark, poisonous-looking ink from tiny vents along their ribs." This is a successful novel on every level, and it is not far-fetched to read of comparisons between it and Joseph Roth's earlier Austrian masterpiece, The Radetzky March. Mary Whipple