{"product_id":"another-green-world-isbn-9780307275790","title":"Another Green World","description":"In 1929, at a youth summit in the Weimar Republic, a group of young Americans meet on a remote mountaintop. Their shifting alliances, rivalries and sexual intrigues foreshadow the turmoil and violence that will soon engulf Europe. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFifteen years later, these men and women are suddenly reunited as one of them discovers an incendiary document from Heinrich Himmler, offering proof of Hitler’s Final Solution. A journey from the confusions of youth into the chaos of war, \u003ci\u003eAnother Green World \u003c\/i\u003ereaches from the last shimmering summer before the Great Depression into the darkest precincts of the twentieth century.\"A World War II thriller ˆ la \u003ci\u003eThe Guns of Navarone\u003c\/i\u003e. . . . \u003ci\u003eAnother Green World\u003c\/i\u003e ponders the specter, perhaps only imagined, of a golden age lost.\" —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\"Eloquent and erudite. . . . A challenging novel whose take on World War II is closer to the surreal dystopia of Thomas Pynchon than to the patriotic valor of Herman Wouk.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e“An engaging and illuminating read. . . . Mingling German myth and literature with its story line, Richard Grant's \u003ci\u003eAnother Green World\u003c\/i\u003e at times makes you feel that its characters are operating in some menacing Grimm's fairyland.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“I read \u003ci\u003eAnother Green World\u003c\/i\u003e with both wonder and awe. Its scope and sweep are breathtaking, its understanding of human nature both mysterious and profound, its heart and empathy exhilarating.\" —Richard Russo\u003cb\u003eRichard Grant\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Norfolk in 1952, attended the University of Virginia, and served in the U.S. Coast Guard. He lives in Rockport, Maine, where he has been a contributing editor of \u003ci\u003eDown East\u003c\/i\u003e magazine, chaired the literature panel of the Maine Arts Commission, and won a New England Journalism Award for his column in the \u003ci\u003eCamden Herald\u003c\/i\u003e.The boy arrived nameless and barefoot. They reckoned he could get by   without shoes a while longer, until a suitable pair could be stolen.   But names, they had plenty of those, more names than people to wear   them. So they began calling him Shlomo, or Solomon, because once   there had been a Shlomo whom everybody had liked--when he got killed   in an ambush, they blew up a supply train in his honor--and because   the boy's lidless, owl-like stare gave him a look of preternatural   wisdom. Nobody cared that he must have been called something else.   The past meant nothing to these hungry, half-crazed heroes, and few   of them expected to know a future. They were like birds shot in   flight who would not survive the long, thrilling plummet to the   ground.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Meanwhile there was a world to love: mountain lakes that shone black   and bottomless like the eyes of a god; sunlight as hard as ice   shards; slow-motion waterfalls; a tang of smoke in the upper air;   pointed trees and naked, bronze-toned rock; and beyond, unrolling in   yellow and green, the vast plain of Northern Europe, like a primed   canvas on which generals painted their wars.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Nobody knew where the boy had come from, and he seemed unable to tell   them. Certainly he had traveled far because his feet were bleeding   from the journey. He was undersized, like everyone who had grown up   in the ghettos and the camps, and might have been any age from eight   to twenty. He stared at them and at the black spruces and the   pitiless blue sky. His eyes drank the world in and gave nothing back.   For all you could tell, he was blind. For all you could tell, he was   gripped by visions, searing glimpses of eternity. Whatever the truth   was, he was not disposed to share it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He had come, they supposed, seeking the great man, the guerrilla   chief, wily and stouthearted, who gave hope to what few of his people   remained. The great fighter, so people said, struck at the niemcy,   the dogs--that is, the Germans--on roads and in forests and in their   own well-patrolled lairs. He fought them by night and by daylight,   using whatever weapons were available, including his own hands. He   had never been beaten, never outsmarted, never caught. The more   fervent members of his cult swore he had killed a man with his eyes   alone. For years the niemcy had hunted him, snarling at his heels   like a pack of ravening wolves, yet he had slipped out of their jaws.   And still the contest dragged on, the ritual chase, even as hunters   and hunted were together dying off.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    How much of this legend the boy might have heard was beyond knowing.   He sat patiently at the center of the camp, not too close to the   fire, not too far away, barely responding when people spoke to him,   accepting what food they had to offer with no more than a nod of   thanks. He ate like an animal, gnawing and grunting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A week passed or more--there was little point keeping track, unless a   rendezvous or a timed detonator was in question--before the great   fighter returned from a mission deep into Poland. He came alone,   slipping into the mountain hold so quietly that the sentries might as   well have been asleep. Somehow, despite the dark, he noticed the boy   straight off. He gave him a look that some described as thoughtful   and others as distracted while moving quickly through the camp,   summoning this one and that one--only his closest deputies, those he   had chosen to run things when he was absent and, in the course of   things, dead--and leading them to a small hut near a cold, whispering   stream. Later it was said that a sheet of paper had been passed among   them. Tallow light flickered briefly and went out. The fighter's   shadow fell once more by moonlight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The boy did not flinch and offered no greeting when the great man   stepped closer to the campfire, lowered himself before it and held   his hands out, palms open, like a supplicant, or a prisoner   demonstrating his harmlessness. He ignored the boy, or seemed to,   though they sat barely a stride apart. The rest of the band looked on   from a respectful distance, none wishing to disturb their weary   leader or to interrupt the rapt observances of the hollow-eyed,   wasted boy. They remembered meeting the great man themselves for the   first time, after everything one had heard. The surprise of it--how   small he was, how physically insignificant: short-legged,   long-necked, all joints and no muscle, perhaps even, though no one   dared say it, the least bit stoop-shouldered. And that face . . .   well. Could this truly be the famous warrior, hated and feared by the   Nazis, whose deeds were celebrated around a thousand fires in the   outlands of Mitteleuropa?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Such thoughts might have run through the mind of the boy called   Shlomo. Or they might not. His empty eyes betrayed nothing, only   stared with a perfect equipoise known best to the already-dead. Then   suddenly--all who were there remembered such an instant--the great   man turned to look at him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The boy's eyes stretched even wider than before. But he didn't blink;   bravely he met the terrible gaze that, so legend held, could kill you   as surely as a bullet. Thus they remained, until the hero did   something odd with his mouth, or his nose, maybe his ears--you   couldn't say exactly what--and the boy responded just as they all   had, each in turn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    High on a mountain in a land once called Czechoslovakia, claimed by   at least three factions in this war that would go on forever, a boy   who wore lightly the name of a king blinked his eyes--those eyes that   had watched from the forest while his family was murdered one by one,   little Mirka first and Papi last--and with no warning at all, least   of all to himself, he began to laugh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His laughter was high and wild. There was relief in it and a kind of   delirium. It rose like smoke on the chilling breeze, and before it   faded, the great fighter had taken the boy into his arms and   continued to hold him, wordless, as if the two of them had slipped   out of the war, out of time itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And so in the dark heart of Europe, a lost boy tasted peace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But what peace could there be for the fighter?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e    THE DISTRICT\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    July 1944\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ingo Miller, the man whose life she was about to ruin, ran a   beer-and-schnitzel joint north of Dupont Circle. He lived in a flat   upstairs and, so far as anyone knew, rarely set foot off the   premises. But this intelligence, like the rest of her private dossier   on Miller, I., though extensive, might have been years out of date.   So to make certain--and, let's be honest, to buy a little more   time--she dispatched a pair of typists armed with a petty-cash   disbursement on what some office wag promptly dubbed a Daring Mission   Behind Republican Lines. Their report, presented three days later,   was dishearteningly clear: Outside his restaurant, the subject had no   life worth speaking of. He was making, it seemed, his last stand   there, besieged on every side by the twentieth century. If she meant   to play Red Death to his barricaded prince, that was the place to do   it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And so it happened that Martina Panich, sometime Roosevelt pom-pom   girl and lately leaker-in-chief to the United States War Refugee   Board, despite her misgivings--too many to count--and after having   killed as much of the day as feasible in her tiny office at Treasury,   which she shared with an elderly percolator, set off walking north on   Connecticut Avenue shortly after three o'clock, the very worst part   of the afternoon. She kept to the shady side--Ingo would appreciate   that, no metaphor was too much for him--but Washington heat, like   destiny, has a way of finding you. By the time she reached M she felt   wrung out, slick with sweat and . . . would you say abject? Or did   that have to do with your slot in the post-Depression economy?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Either way: at such a moment, second thoughts naturally arose.   Martina had agonized over this little stroll uptown for a solid   week--truly, she had thought of nothing else. In the end it was   unavoidable. She no more wanted to burst in on Ingo's well-ordered   universe than to parachute into occupied Belgium. But these days, you   do what you have to do. War, as they say, is war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Yes, and turnips are turnips. The sharp reply--what did it   mean?--came in her grandmother's voice, pungently accented, straight   out of some shtetl on the rump side of the Pale. It bucked her up. It   restored her to her usual condition of chronic, poorly suppressed   outrage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Martina stepped dangerously in front of a bright purple truck from   Ridgewell's Catering--even in wartime, the machinery of government   runs on hors d'oeuvres and double bourbons--before arriving safely   twelve strides later at the Circle proper, a small park that anchored   the eastern end of Embassy Row. She waded through pigeons, a   boisterous flotilla of navy boys on furlough, chattery secretaries   out to lunch from nearby offices, and a jetsam of newspapers,   cigarette packs and sandwich wrappers cast up by the human tide on   the steps of the old French fountain, its waters greenish, its   once-white marble yellowed by auto exhaust. Dutifully she registered   the sights and sounds (a siren's whine, a well-dressed wino who   believed himself a Justice of the Supreme Court and, to the west, a   shoulder of charcoal-gray cloud above the weary lindens of P Street),   but her mind remained stubbornly elsewhere. Not on the war--that was   too vast to think about, you simply navigated within it--nor on her   father's mother, who had died, thank heaven, without fuss in New   Jersey. Nor finally on Ingo, quite. Though he was connected, like   Martina herself, to this unnamed thing, this risen corpse of their   mutual past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A few paces ahead, just off the sidewalk, a sailor opened his mouth   to make fresh. But taking a second look--Martina was older than he'd   thought, with a certain expression on her face--he changed his mind   and sat staring mumly from his spot on the brown beaten grass, taking   in, as she marched by, her proletarian hairdo, her unglamorous   low-heeled shoes, and the handbag, tall and sturdy as a valise, she   clutched tightly against an antebellum linen blouse that might once   have been stylish, now laundered and reworn to within one thread of   its life. These government dames, he would be thinking. They'll chew   you up as soon as look at you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He would be right. Martina left the Circle and proceeded northward on   Connecticut. The rumble of a trolley, like bombs falling on a movie   screen, rose from the depths of the underground station somewhere   beneath her feet. She squared her shoulders. Almost there now--a   matter of steps. Her jaw muscles flexed. She was ready to chew up   Ingo Miller, her oldest and dearest friend.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    *    *    *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Before the war (how many sentences began that way) Ingo had owned a   Bierskeller called the Hessian House. Today he owned an old-world   restaurant and lounge called the Rusty Ring. It was the same   place--the only changes were the sign out front and, on the menu,   certain concessions to wartime food rationing. The same heavy door   still crouched at the bottom of the same four concrete steps. The   same lace panel--no longer \"German\"--was strung across the   plate-glass window. And somewhere within, proprietarily brooding,   changeless, and, in fact, an avowed enemy of change, the same Ingo.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Martina did not pause at the door. In the long, narrow, dimly lit   front room she made like a regular patron, trooping up the well-worn   path toward the distant mirrored twinkling of the bar. Tables stood   mostly empty beneath their starched white cloths. Two guys who looked   like wire-service reporters, ties loose and jackets slung over an   extra chair, eyeballed her from a corner. Near the center of the room   a blue-haired, regal-looking woman brandished a cigarette in a long   holder, aiming rather than smoking it, dancing with her head alone to   the schmaltz oozing out of the old Victor phonograph. Trust Ingo not   to install a jukebox. On the other hand, who'd drop a nickel to hear   this stuff?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Inside as out, the place was the same as ever. Maybe old-timers found   it comforting. But Ingo had lost his most loyal and free-spending   customers--this Martina knew for a fact--back in '41, when the German   embassy around the corner on Mass Ave closed shop. Before that, Nazi   money had paid for the forest-green carpet and the simulated log fire   and other dubious improvements. Martina suspected, and Ingo never   explicitly denied, that the row of pictures along the side   walls--cheap reproductions of nineteenth-century landscapes of the   German Romantic school, mounted in flashy gilt--had begun life as a   series of travel posters, shorn now of their inspirational slogans.   American cousins--your Homeland beckons you! See what's doing in the   New Europe! It was to vomit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She reached the screen of potted greenery that separated the dining   room from the lounge. These plants, she believed, had been dying from   lack of daylight for the better part of a decade. Even in the final   act, nothing here happened quickly. Twilight of the Palms, a tragic   opera in four parts. Ingo Miller, baritone, sings the part of the   Jolly Innkeeper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Martina parted the fronds. And there he stood: an unmovable eminence,   not fat but fleshy, a redoubt of idees fixes, safe in his usual spot   behind the taps. Ingo's in his cellar, all's right with the world.   His yellow hair might be a bit thinner than when she saw him   last--but hey, Marty, we're neither one of us getting any younger.   The difference was, Martina might have hit thirty-five not long ago,   but Ingo had been forty his whole life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Spotting her, he faltered briefly in his routine swabbing of the   varnished, glowing surface of the bar, then quickly recovered,   slapped the bar rag back in its usual place across his shoulder and   broke into a smile. \"Look what the cat dragged in,\" he said   cheerfully. \"Another bomb-throwing New Dealer.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She affected not to hear. In their history of intramural conflict,   politics was only one of several fields on which they'd skirmished.   The first shot had been fired in their sandbox days, growing up two   doors apart in Brookland, a leafy neighborhood on the northeastern   edge of the city. Ingo once tried to yank off her hated pigtails.   Martina struck back a few days later under a backyard sprinkler,   attempting, with blunt nursery scissors, to excise his penis. How   little really had changed.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305047740645,"sku":"NP9780307275790","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307275790.jpg?v=1767721642","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/another-green-world-isbn-9780307275790","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}