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
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