Praise for Mohr: A Novel
Named a Notable Book of 2006 by The San Francisco Chronicle
“His aerialist’s sense of history, his sleight of hand, his animal knowledge of political practice, his silver tact and his cool tenderness make his performance nothing less than Orphic. Listen to it.”
—John Berger, Booker Prize winner
“Painful and beautiful. … Reuss … writes with Jamesian complexity about states of mind and character … [and] of their days and dismays with brilliant understanding and a painter’s rich detail. … [W]ithout underlining the point (he subtly circumnavigates it instead), [Reuss] makes evident that the self-eviction practiced by Mohr stands for the national eviction of his fellow Jews. … With Käthe and Mohr, Mr. Reuss has unforgettably juxtaposed two figures: the rooted and the uprooted. Unlike the twin compasses of Donne’s “Valediction”—lovers joined even in death—they move not in parallel but in a tragic opposite.”
—The New York Times
“A quiet triumph … what he has done—first by following his own curiosity and then a trail of photographs and letters—is re-embody a couple pulled apart by a world of conflict. His book almost heals that rupture, though in the end all it can do is give it a voice.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle
“Reuss writes with mesmerizing grace, sacrificing neither leisure nor romance to what is, essentially, a thriller.”
—flakmag.com
“Using the innovative format of speculative fiction based on a newly-discovered cache of fifty 1920s and ’30s vintage family photographs from playwright Max Mohr, novelist (Horace Afoot, The Wasties) Reuss weaves a story of loss and longing, switching between Mohr, a German Jew who exiled himself to Shanghai, and his wife Käthe and daughter Eva still in Germany as the Nazis are coming to full power … Told with skill and beauty and haunted by the duo-toned photographs, Reuss captures the distanced writer bounding between heroics and fatalism, his spirited wife and child, and their lives both separate and apart during a time of the world gone mad.”
—Historical Novels Review
“Mohr, as imagined by Reuss, is not a gloomy character. He has wit, charm, elegance, and existential lightness, as does the novel. It is a story about love without being a love story, and a novel about politics whose central character is apolitical: quite an achievement. How true all this is to the ‘real’ Mohr is for others to say, but I was convinced and engaged by Reuss’s creation.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[An] unusual and thoughtful novel.”
—The Boston Globe
“Reads like the best of Graham Greene, with the happy difference that Reuss does not wear his politics on his sleeve. He is more concerned with how circumstances magnify the virtues and flaws of his well-drawn characters. He imagines a life for Mohr which, if not verifiably factual, has the ring of deepest humanity.”
—The St. Louis Post Dispatch
“An unusually close collaboration between fiction and fact. The book is driven, on one level, by a psychological conundrum the documents cannot resolve. Mohr was Jewish, and for him to want to leave the encroaching darkness of Nazi Germany seems understandable enough. And yet: How could he possibly have left behind a beloved wife and daughter? But Reuss chose to highlight a different level of question, as well. For he didn’t just use that trove of photographs to inspire his storytelling—he layered them into the novel itself. “Mohr” is constructed around a selection of almost 50 images through which the story flows.”
—The Washington Post
“In 1934, facing Nazi persecution . . . Mohr packed his bags, said goodbye to his loyal wife and daughter, and [left]. … Reuss has spent 20 years trying to figure out why.”
—Washington City Paper
“An elegant, beautifully written book … This is a novel that readers will find easy to consume. Yet the story stays with you long after the last pages are turned. I could not let go of a lot of this book, particularly those passages which dwell on Käthe and her struggle. She is left to love Mohr, even though she lost him the moment he found his distant dream.”
—Colleen Mondor, bookslut.com
“Sensitive … poignant. This is not a conventional love story with a happy ending; it is rather a tragic love story that is sympathetically set forth. The backdrop looms ominously—Nazi Germany, Japanese aggressors, Chinese communists, and Chinese nationalists. Reuss has succeeded admirably in combining actual history and facts about Max Mohr with his imaginative re-creation of a vivid story that generates unanswered questions about human behavior and human motivations. It is to Reuss’s credit that he has accepted the enigmatic nature of these issues, leaving his readers to ponder them as they muse about the mystery of Max Mohr.”—Jewish Journal of South Florida
“[An] unusual wartime love story. … I was truly taken with the story’s beautiful dreamlike descriptions and haunting foreboding of tragedy.” —Jewish Book World
Mohr: a novel
Frederick Reuss
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All photographs and postcards used in the creation of this book are from the collection of Nicolas Humbert and are used here by permission. All rights to these photographs are reserved.
The Morgenstern poem that appears on pages 57–58, “Sieh Nicht, Was Andre Tun,” is by Christian Morgenstern, translated by Eileen Hutchins and Ursula Grahl. Reprinted from Anthology of German Poetry from Hölderlin to Rilke (New York: Doubleday, 1960), ed. Angel Flores.
Unbridled Books
Denver, Colorado
Copyright © 2006 Frederick Reuss
Originally pubished as an Unbridled Books hard cover.
First paperback edition, 2007
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reuss, Frederick, 1960–
Mohr : a novel / Frederick Reuss. p. cm.
Hardcover Edition ISBN 1-932961-17-8
Paperback Edition ISBN 10: 1-932961-35-6
Paperback Edition ISBN 13: 978-1-932961-35-5
1. Mohr, Max, b. 1891—Fiction. 2. Authors, German—Fiction. 3. Jewish authors—
Germany—Fiction. 4. Physicians—China—Shanghai—Fiction. 5. Germany—Fiction.
6. Shanghai (China)—Fiction I. Title.
PS3568.E7818M64 2006
813’.54—dc22
2005037958
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Book design by Claire Vaccaro
First Printing
To my mother
Schwer zu entdecken sind nämlich die zwischen den Schiefertafeln eingelagerten geflügelten Wirbeltiere der Vorzeit.