Damn! I came in here to list that book. Great minds, and all that jazz. Of course, if anyone here wants to read it, we've just ruined it for them, as you don't find out that fact until halfway through the book. Hell of a shock for me -- especially since I had only started reading it because I noticed it on the library shelf.
Yeah, I probably should have done that in white. My bad. Sorry if I’ve just ruined someone’s day.
Turning to other matters, I managed to find two more morbid titles for the collection. The first is a book entitled
K Is for Killing by Daniel Easterman. In this one, Lindberg gets the presidency in 1936, IIRC, and proceeds to let the Ku Klux Klan run the country. How morbid does is get? Well, the book starts with a table listing the names of American and German concentration camps in 1942. The American list continues for about two pages after the German list finishes. To top it off, we also get an excerpt from an incredibly racist children’s book from the period.
I also came across a somewhat obscure one by an Austrian named Christopher Ransmyr. It’s called
Morbus Kithara, though the title in English is
The Dog King. It’s set in the fictional Austrian village of Moor in the years after World War II that was the site of a slave-powered quarry. However, in this book, the Morgenthau Plan has been imposed on postwar Austria, and the whole area is reverting back to a medieval existence. To make matters worse, the American occupation authorities are going to surreal lengths to procure “justice” from the populace. Outside the town, a sign has been mounted that reads:
Here
Eleven Thousand Nine Hundred
Seventy-Three People Lie Dead
Slain by the Inhabitants of this Land
Welcome to Moor
Meanwhile “Stellamour Parties,” named after the American official that created the deindustrialization plan in this story, are used to preserve the memories of the past through having the whole town dress in costume as victim and perpetrator and reenact wartime events beneath the mouths of the quarries. Not only are all the characters in the book tortured in some way or another, those that were born after the war ended don’t really feel anything at all towards those who perished.
Grim, huh?