Under the Lady Liberty

While the German fleet is advancing toward the coast of Manhattan with many successes behind them already, the little man (Adolf Hitler) determined to take his revenge, aboard one of the ships, commands his army to bring Charlie Chaplin to him, who made fun of him in his movie The Great Dictator. Now all set with the plan to attack as they land on the American soil, the little man wants an orchestra to play Wagner for him and very soon his army brings the famous comedian to the ship for torture, the little man has decided for him. In other time and part of the world, precisely in France in the 1880s, a man named Olivier Legrand gives up his job in the mine drifts and starts working as a stevedore in a port in his desire to do something valuable. This is the same time when The Statue of Liberty was being unassembled and loaded into a ship to take it to America. And one morning, just in time, Olivier, as a stowaway for America, finds a suitable cradle in the crown of the Lady Liberty; and starts his crooked-all-the-way voyage for a new life. 

In this alternate history, 'the little man' Adolf pulls off the fingernails of Chaplin in what is called the Marco Polo code, and his men do the same to Pablo Picasso, preventing him to complete Guernica. The two lives – of Chaplin and Olivier – and two stories run parallelly, with few commonalities and seem connected though separated by time. The Nazis have conquered all of Europe and have landed on America too, and as the story unfolds, while the German fleet captures Manhattan, taking city and the streets under control, Chaplin escapes through the porthole of the cellar and is rescued by an old man – hunchbacked Olivier; the two parallel stories converge in an unlikely fate. The little man has ordered to play Wagner incessantly throughout the newly conquered city of New York, meanwhile Chaplin, who was beaten and injured by the Nazis, gets care of the old Olivier, who already has the responsibility of taking care of his bedridden wife and who sneaking under the eyes of the German soldiers gets Chaplin a typewriter on his request – to quench his thirst for writing another theatre play… In the culmination of the novel, we witness – a silent cinema, rather in dark – an insomniac Adolf fighting almost tramp-turned Chaplin, with a result that has never happened, yet that we are curious to know.

Cano takes smallest details from the world history and turns it into both ironic and horrendous sequence. Especially, the frenzy mindset of the little man, already a victor of the war, and who is still compulsive to take personal revenge with Chaplin for his portrayal in The Great Dictator, brings wonderment. In agreement with the story, Cano convinces us how lives can connect and be shaped and gently fuses the dark and the light with candid narrative full of lyricism. Blade of Light carries the sentiments and thoughts of gentle folks who lived during the war, the impulse of the artists fighting on their ground and the cruelty of the dictator suffered with his own mania – Blade of Light is something born out of ordinary and extraordinary characters and stories we're close to witness!

Author: Harkaitz Cano

Translator: Amaia Gabantxo

Publisher: Centre for Basque Studies, University of Nevada

Page Count: 96pp

Price: $19.95

Author Photo Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harkaitz_Cano_2014.jpg

Review Copy Courtesy: Centre for Basque Studies, University of Nevada