the new harry mulisch is not a novel, and in fact, is not even a new work, but one first published in the early 60s, and only translated into english in 2005. i had assumed mistakenly that it was a fictional work on eichmann, the way siegfried was about hitler, but in fact, in 1961, at the same time that hannah arendt was covering the eichmann trial for the new yorker (which articles were later to become eichmann in jerusalem,) mulisch, then only a minor novelist, covered the same trial for a dutch paper, and his articles became the book "case 40/61" which, like arendt, he called "a report." arendt apparently had read mulisch's account in german when it was first published and praised it, and it seems unbelievable that arendt's should have remained the dominant narrative in the english-speaking world while mulisch's work remained untranslated till now.

it is also much more than reportage (though that part of it which directly concerns the trial is by force of its very subject rivetting) - much more than metaphysical reflections on the nature and origin of evil (including: the depiction of horror being itself the cause of horror, image as fons and origo of nazism, a definition of evil which is not arendt's banal, but what he calls the embodiment of the ideal of psycho-technology - which seems extremely prescient: when you consider cyborgs, and the mechanical or technological man - which is, by the way, subtler than the idea of the functionary of evil as automaton (come now, even high fantasy likes the idea of the army of the dark lord as faceless automata) - but passionless and unhypnotised execution of orders, obedience without belief, and conduct strictly by a code that is predicated on the word) - but also - a rich personal essay - on landscape and people, full of intelligence, investigative energy, introspection, individual melancholy too.