The Phoenix
A novel about the Hindenburg
Henning Boëtius

The blurb lied. I thought I was getting a combination thriller, historical fiction, and conspiracy theory novel. What I got was two of those three, but with the addition of a love story and a man coping with a change in his identity. All this in a surprisingly literate and well written novel.

The historical component follows a crewman for several journeys that the Hindenburg made during the 30's, and some of the political background of that time. A passenger tries to find out why the airship fell out of the sky in a ball of flame. He doesn't believe the results of the commission to investigate the disaster, and looks for evidence of a conspiracy.

A conspiracy theory is a common hook for a thriller, but this novel is anything but. Even in the best of these everything builds toward a climax, and peters out quickly afterward. The worst of them are simple minded plot machines. However, this is an elegant mood creation, a novel about people and their motivations. The pacing is impeccable, allowing the reader time to savour the time period, and the stately means of travel. The setting moves about surely through various locations between the mid 30's and the post war period.

In an odd way it's also about the famous airship and it's even more famous ending. Without burying the reader in technical detail, one learns quite a bit about airships. We also learn what the committee investigating the disaster believed to be the cause, although the protagonist doesn't believe it. Although it's not commonly known, German scientists discovered the cause, and American scientists duplicated the reasoning in 1998.

There is also a real historical link to the Hindenburg. The author is the son of the only living survivor of the Hindenberg, the man who was at the elevator wheel during the crash.

I borrowed the book from the library on a whim, and was hooked. I'll be looking for this to join my library.

First published in 2000 as Phönix aus Asche by btb, an imprint of Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich.

English translation by John Cullen, 2001
Nan A Talese, a division of Doubleday, 2000
0-385-50183-8