A Hero of Our Time

Name: A Hero of Our Time
Rating: 3.39 (148 reviews)

by Richard Foreman

First published 2012

Amazon

3.3(148)

In the ruins of defeated Germany, Wehrmacht officer Robert Fischer confronts the consequences of the regime he served. His guilt centres on a Jewish academic he guarded as a prisoner and could not protect from persecution. The collapse of military authority gives Fischer physical freedom but no simple way to recover a moral identity after complicity and defeat.

His relationship with a young nurse offers the possibility of love and renewal, yet memory repeatedly interrupts the attempt to begin again. Foreman structures the novel as a tragic account of responsibility rather than an escape from it. Post-war devastation, displacement and the knowledge of the Holocaust make redemption uncertain, requiring Fischer to distinguish remorse that changes conduct from self-pity that merely seeks absolution.