The Aesthetics of Resistance, volume III

Part I of the novel starts in 1940 and describes German Communist exiles in Stockholm, Sweden, and their efforts to build antifascist resistance inside Germany. The narrator’s parents arrive; his mother is psychically damaged by Nazi atrocities she has witnessed. His new friend, Swedish writer Karin Boye, loses faith in art and humanity and commits suicide. An excursus on the visit of resistance member Richard Stahlmann to Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, reflects on the positive power of aesthetics. In Part II, the Stockholm resistance smuggles Charlotte Bischoff into Germany, where she aids the underground Red Orchestra, whose members provide intelligence to the Nazis’ enemy, Communist Russia. But their communication code is cracked, and most are arrested and executed. The novel then follows Bischoff, who reflects on the importance of resistance, her ideals unchanged by the terrible fate of her comrades, while the narrator reflects on the role of art in defending human life and values.