Saints And Villains A Novel

Novel based on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and philosopher who was exectued by the Nazis in 1945 for plotting to assassinate Hitler.

An astonishing historical novel in the tradition of Schindler's List--evoking powerfully the danger and heroism of the Nazi resistance. What is the price of acting morally in a time of great evil, when sin and necessity seem twinned? Saints and Villains is a strikingly resonant novel that dramatizes this painful dilemma through the fictional re-creation of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This emblematic figure risked his life--and finally lost it--through his participation in the failed plot to assassinate Hitler and topple the Nazi regime. In a gripping and sweeping narrative that moves from Berlin to London to New York City, encompassing shattering historical events, clandestine meetings, perilous missions abroad, and eventual imprisonments and death, Denise Giardina brings to life an instance of shining courage in the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War. A novel that is bold in conception and utterly convincing in its powers of fictional re-creation--a literary event.

What is the price of acting morally in a time of great evil, when sin and necessity seem twinned? Saints and Villains is a strikingly resonant novel that dramatizes this painful dilemma through the fictional re-creation of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This emblematic figure risked his life--and finally lost it--through his participation in the failed plot to assassinate Hitler and topple the Nazi regime. In a gripping and sweeping narrative that moves from Berlin to London to New York City, encompassing shattering historical events, clandestine meetings, perilous missions abroad, and eventual imprisonments and death, Denise Giardina brings to life an instance of shining courage in the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War. A novel that is bold in conception and utterly convincing in its powers of fictional re-creation--a literary event.

In the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War, there were few instances of shining moral courage, let along secular sainthood. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Nazi resister was the exception. This emblematic figure risked his life--and finally lost it--through his participation in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler and topple his regime. Saints and Villains gives us this exemplary life in a sweeping narrative that is bold in conception and utterly convincing in its power of imaginative reconstruction.

Stephen Haynes's provocative study articulates the many motives and agendas that readers and scholars have brought to their study of Bonhoeffer, making it difficult to assess objectively the relationship of his political and religious commitments, the real meaning of his theology, and his words and actions on behalf of Jews. Reading Haynes's book helps us learn not only what Bonhoeffer has to teach us but also what it is we most desire to learn.

This edition of Writing America, published by the Nat. Endow. for the Arts (NEA), features the work of 50 NEA Literature Fellowship winners -- one from each state -- who paint a vivid portrait of the U.S. in the last decades of the 20th cent. They evoke the magnificent spectrum of people, places, and experiences that define America. Their biographies and personal narratives are stories in and of themselves, revealing each writer's own unique path to fulfill the call to write. The selections, which include a mix of poetry and prose, serve as inspiration to emerging writers and provide a glimpse of the tremendous vitality and diversity of contemporary American literature.

"Stephen Haynes, whose volume The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon probed the many conflicting ways in which Bonhoeffer has been understood by Christians for their own uses, now brings new clarity to the vexed and controversial question of Bonhoeffer's relationship to Jews and the Jewish people. Haynes's text analyzes the historical record and Bonhoeffer's maturing theology and offers an analysis of Bonhoeffer himself, his work, and his legacy for a generation learning from the Holocaust."--BOOK JACKET.