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Dr. B.
The former director of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm makes his literary debut with this dramatic and riveting novel of book publishing, émigrés, spies, and diplomats in World War II Sweden based on his grandfather’s life. In 1933, after Hitler and the Nazi Party consolidated power in Germany, Immanuel Birnbaum, a German Jewish journalist based in Warsaw, is forbidden from writing for newspapers in his homeland. Six years later, just months before the German invasion of Poland that ignites World War II, Immanuel escapes to Sweden with his wife and two young sons. Living as a refugee in Stockholm, Immanuel continues to write, contributing articles to a liberal Swiss newspaper in Basel under the name Dr. B. He also begins working as an editor for the legendary German publisher S. Fischer Verlag. Gottfried Bermann Fischer had established an office in Stockholm to evade German censorship, publishing celebrated German writers such as Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig. Immanuel also becomes entangled with British intelligence agents who produce and distribute anti-Nazi propaganda in Stockholm. On orders from Winston Churchill, the Allied spies plan several acts of sabotage. But when the Swedish postal service picks up a letter written in invisible ink, the plotters are exposed. The letter, long a mystery in military history accounts, was in fact written by Dr. B. But why would a Jew living in exile and targeted for death by the Nazis have wanted to tip them off? Daniel Birnbaum’s novel will intrigue readers with its fascinating portrayal of the astonishing connections and often mysterious players illuminated by his grandfather’s remarkable wartime life.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published May 24, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
September 5, 2022
I'm always drawn to historical books based on actual people/events from the author's life, and this one fit the bill. With intelligent writing, and slow intrigue buildup, Dr. B's story unfolds smoothly, but was a bit difficult to follow with the Swedish/German names/places.
June 10, 2022
Tõestisündinud lool põhinev raamat, mis jutustab juudi rahvusest ajakirjanikust, kes teise maailmasõja alguses Stockholmis tööpostil olles nurjas inglise spioonide plaani õhata Rootsis oluline ja suur rauasadam. Tundub justkui väga kaasahaarv ja põnev lugu. Paraku pidin pettuma. Ootasin ma sellest ilmselt rohkem põnevust ja filmilikku spioonilugu, tegelikkus on aga palju aeglasem, on palju filosofeerimist ja pikki heietavaid monolooge. Samuti jäi mulle mingis mõttes kontekstist puudu, siin raamatus on mingid tegelased ja sündmused, aga need pole huvitavalt seotud ning tundusid kuidagi suvalised. Ja kui see eelnev jutt ehk segaseks jäi siis vot just nii segane see kogu raamat mulle tunduski. Kõige põnevamaks osutus hoopis autori järelsõna, mis tegelikult 4 leheküljega võtab kogu raamatu kokku… Raamatus kasutatud originaalfotod olid samuti plussiks, seega hindeks ikkagi kaks tärni! Ja kel endal ehk taustateadmised ajaloost ja tolle aja poliitikast kõvemad ning ei oota siit mingit mürglit, siis võib-olla et naudite teost ka rohkem kui mina.
September 11, 2022
Smart&funny. An excellent book
Very clever and well written about Stockholm during the second world war, when ”neutral” Stockholm was the center of espionage from both sides. Daniel Birnbaum uses the unbelievabie (true) story of his grandfather to tell a story full of drama, historical references as well as intellectual references to Zweig et al. Adds another level of depths to the book, but it can be read just as a fantastic novel as is. I LOVED this book. Highly recommended
Very clever and well written about Stockholm during the second world war, when ”neutral” Stockholm was the center of espionage from both sides. Daniel Birnbaum uses the unbelievabie (true) story of his grandfather to tell a story full of drama, historical references as well as intellectual references to Zweig et al. Adds another level of depths to the book, but it can be read just as a fantastic novel as is. I LOVED this book. Highly recommended
September 15, 2022
Thank you - I enjoyed this book very much. I highly recommend it.
September 15, 2022
Great story. Very fascinating. Loved reading this!
September 15, 2022
I was very interested in this book after reading about it in JC. It was great - Interested in other books by D Birnbaum. Well done!
June 2, 2022
The narrative is based on real events. Dr Birbaum (Dr B) did exist and was in fact the author's grandfather. The story starts on his arrival to Stockholm with his family flying the German nazi regime. He is a journalist and editor and we follow him in his rounds and dealings in WW2 neutral Sweden... all is not what it seems, obviously. Interesting and very real characters prop up, from Alexandra Kollontai (Russian ambassador) to the famous publisher Bermann-Fisher. Alas, the story and how it was told did not grip me. I was not interested in the outcome of the different strands and what one could call the denouement did not make for the rather cold and flat tone of the writing (this is a translation: could it be this the cause?).
I imagine that if you are interested in this period the novel may throw some light in not very well-known facts. Stockholm was the northern Casablanca, and I for one was unaware of that.
I imagine that if you are interested in this period the novel may throw some light in not very well-known facts. Stockholm was the northern Casablanca, and I for one was unaware of that.
July 28, 2022
When is a spy novel not exactly a spy novel? When, as with “Dr. B.” by Daniel Birnbaum (Harper), it tries to do something far more complex. “Dr. B.,” which is based on true events, opens with its title character, German-Jewish journalist Immanuel Birmbaum (also known as Dr. B), imprisoned in Stockholm for spying for Nazi Germany, something that makes little sense since he fled from Warsaw to escape the Nazis’ invasion of Poland.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...
July 30, 2022
This was a slog. The story was disjointed, hard to follow and, frankly, boring.
Read
July 7, 2022This book describes things that are not familiar to me, and I feel that I most likely need more background information to understand it fully.
I might come back to it in time.
As I write this, it is the start of July. It's definitely NOT light summer reading, and I am not in the mood for a difficult book.
I might come back to it in time.
As I write this, it is the start of July. It's definitely NOT light summer reading, and I am not in the mood for a difficult book.
July 1, 2022
I think this novel was too detailed. For many chapters, I could hardly read for more than 30 minutes before I was not interested. The last 60 pages tied most of the 200 pages together and not needed more than 60 of the first 200 to have gotten to the end. Exhausting.
Shelved as 'could-not-even-finish'
June 15, 2022DNF at less than 1%. Very emphatically not for me.
June 23, 2022
I have never been so confused while reading a book in my entire life...
July 3, 2022
Winston Churchill is intent on stopping the flow of iron ore from Sweden into Nazi Germany, and in his usual way (throw the spaghetti on the wall to see if it's done), he leaves the task to some drunk amateurs. They drive their car into a ditch, they have mishaps with skis, and ultimately their third attempt is foiled before they even get on the road when Swedish postal officials intercept an invisible ink message sent by Dr. B.
The book puts all of that action off-stage.
Instead, the book tries to get into the head of Dr. B, a German journalist whom the Nazis definitely would classify as Jewish, a refugee preoccupied with visas, a writer trying to support his family with cobbled together freelance work. His wife types up his articles and tracks how he actually gets paid, on top of her serious health problems and the kids' difficulties adjusting to life in a new country where they don't speak the language, don't have the right clothes. He wanders around Stockholm, having meetings and sometimes just getting lost.
Through Dr. B we meet several fascinating characters (for example, the Russian feminist who eventually became the Soviet Union's ambassador to Sweden--I may have to track down a whole book about her). Through him we have scenes at a villa (to explore visa options), a publishing house's editorial room (where one editor's mansplaining irritates all his colleagues), a private concert (Wagner is the main topic, so you can guess where that goes). We meet or at least hear about German intellectuals on the run, trying to keep German culture alive.
The Swedish people here are not heroes. Some are enthusiastic about National Socialism, either in spite of its anti-semitism or because of it. If you're a feminist, you might laugh/cry during the parts where Swedish male scientists can't figure out how a woman (Sofya Kovalevskaya) had a big enough brain to do prize-winning math. Of course these men are not sincerely trying to come to terms with how her brilliance affects their fragile egos; they keep her brain in a jar and make "jokes" about her other body parts.
But there is a fun digression about Swedish pastries.
A slow book. It feels moody and claustrophobic, which I think was the point. I found it hard to figure out which characters would be pivotal to the plot and which ones were there just to heighten the feelings of disorientation and distrust. The more you know about Stefan Zweig's story, The Royal Game, the more you might get out of this. The name dropping throughout the book assumes the reader knows a fair amount about German authors, philosophers, and diplomats of the time.
In this niche category of books written by the grandchildren of Europeans who did ambiguous things during WWII, I've read worse, and I've read better. If I were the editor, I'd have suggested writing about Dr. B and the whole Casablanca-of-the-North context from the perspectives of the the women characters instead and expanding the dark humor/dry comedy.
I'm writing this long-ish review b/c the Goodreads reviews (in English) are a bit thin as of now, but the book is interesting enough that my suburban library bought it. Some readers will want to give it a try.
The book puts all of that action off-stage.
Instead, the book tries to get into the head of Dr. B, a German journalist whom the Nazis definitely would classify as Jewish, a refugee preoccupied with visas, a writer trying to support his family with cobbled together freelance work. His wife types up his articles and tracks how he actually gets paid, on top of her serious health problems and the kids' difficulties adjusting to life in a new country where they don't speak the language, don't have the right clothes. He wanders around Stockholm, having meetings and sometimes just getting lost.
Through Dr. B we meet several fascinating characters (for example, the Russian feminist who eventually became the Soviet Union's ambassador to Sweden--I may have to track down a whole book about her). Through him we have scenes at a villa (to explore visa options), a publishing house's editorial room (where one editor's mansplaining irritates all his colleagues), a private concert (Wagner is the main topic, so you can guess where that goes). We meet or at least hear about German intellectuals on the run, trying to keep German culture alive.
The Swedish people here are not heroes. Some are enthusiastic about National Socialism, either in spite of its anti-semitism or because of it. If you're a feminist, you might laugh/cry during the parts where Swedish male scientists can't figure out how a woman (Sofya Kovalevskaya) had a big enough brain to do prize-winning math. Of course these men are not sincerely trying to come to terms with how her brilliance affects their fragile egos; they keep her brain in a jar and make "jokes" about her other body parts.
But there is a fun digression about Swedish pastries.
A slow book. It feels moody and claustrophobic, which I think was the point. I found it hard to figure out which characters would be pivotal to the plot and which ones were there just to heighten the feelings of disorientation and distrust. The more you know about Stefan Zweig's story, The Royal Game, the more you might get out of this. The name dropping throughout the book assumes the reader knows a fair amount about German authors, philosophers, and diplomats of the time.
In this niche category of books written by the grandchildren of Europeans who did ambiguous things during WWII, I've read worse, and I've read better. If I were the editor, I'd have suggested writing about Dr. B and the whole Casablanca-of-the-North context from the perspectives of the the women characters instead and expanding the dark humor/dry comedy.
I'm writing this long-ish review b/c the Goodreads reviews (in English) are a bit thin as of now, but the book is interesting enough that my suburban library bought it. Some readers will want to give it a try.
October 14, 2022
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
Based on the true life story of the author’s grandfather, Dr. B. is one part literary fiction and one part slow burn spy novel, about the events that led a Jewish man to be convicted of spying for the Germans during World War II.
This is the perfect example of a book with an amazing premise that, for me, didn’t live up to its own promise. I expected a spy thriller from the description, and while I’m generally fine with a slower literary fiction novel this one ultimately felt disjointed, a bit confusing, and, frankly, kind of boring. I do love the historical context and backstory, and the intriguing prologue is what kept me reading to see how things would unfold, but overall this just didn’t have enough pay off to be worth the wait.
Still, there were a few interesting, borderline surreal, moments and the writing style itself is fairly interesting. If you really love historical/WWII novels, you might like this more than I did!
Read if you like: historical fiction; stories based on real events; literary fiction about WWII
CW: Mentions of anti-semitism/Nazism; imprisonment/arrest.
Based on the true life story of the author’s grandfather, Dr. B. is one part literary fiction and one part slow burn spy novel, about the events that led a Jewish man to be convicted of spying for the Germans during World War II.
This is the perfect example of a book with an amazing premise that, for me, didn’t live up to its own promise. I expected a spy thriller from the description, and while I’m generally fine with a slower literary fiction novel this one ultimately felt disjointed, a bit confusing, and, frankly, kind of boring. I do love the historical context and backstory, and the intriguing prologue is what kept me reading to see how things would unfold, but overall this just didn’t have enough pay off to be worth the wait.
Still, there were a few interesting, borderline surreal, moments and the writing style itself is fairly interesting. If you really love historical/WWII novels, you might like this more than I did!
Read if you like: historical fiction; stories based on real events; literary fiction about WWII
CW: Mentions of anti-semitism/Nazism; imprisonment/arrest.
August 14, 2022
High recommendation. A fascinating book that reads like a 40s noir film. Each chapter sets a staged location brimming with ambiance and meaning, each a little play in itself, as well as slowly moving ahead the thoroughly ambiguous story of Dr. B., a Jewish German journalist who fled Poland with his family for "neutral" Stockholm in the years before all-out war. The name dropping of actual political figures, spies, and authors will have you raising your eyebrows, because it's real. A novelization of the author's grandfather's actual life during that time, literally discovered in a box of memoirs after his death. It gets you throughly into the experience of a man clearly desperate to protect his family by any means, yet rejected by the nation and culture that is inextricably part of him. My favorite is an early scene in a church, again worthy of a noir film (in fact, it recalls Hitchcock), mysterious and nearly surreal. Rich scenes, rich characterizations, a novel well worth seeking out.
April 30, 2023
A fascinating story that, being a Dr B myself, sold itself on the title. Viewed purely as a novel this would be 3 stars from me, but as the Afterword explains, the book is based also on a cache of family documents. This explains, perhaps, why the narrative can feel like a series of vignettes, rather than a collective whole. Added to that is a 'period' feel to the style (unclear if intended, as this is a translation), lots of name-checking and angular, sometimes abstruse, prose which rewards a slower pace of reading. Recommended nevertheless!
August 13, 2022
Good novel set in 1939, in Stockholm, about a person who stumbles and is half pushed into espionage, but for the wrong people in the wrong place--or are things more complicated than they look? Meanwhile, various other wheels are incompetently turning that Dr. B is also caught up in though wholly unaware. As someone pointed out, it's like a Graham Greene novel. Our Man in Havana comes to mind.
Ralph Fiennes is to star in the movie. I can easily see him as the well-meaning Dr. B.
Ralph Fiennes is to star in the movie. I can easily see him as the well-meaning Dr. B.
November 20, 2022
To emphasize what’s already been said: the German and Swedish names make it very hard to keep people and places organized in my brain. I think if I knew way more about Europe and the specific details of politics in the 30s/40s - this would have been a better read. I was bought in for a few chapters, but certainly not a page turner. Kills its own momentum for side stories that don’t move the story forward.
July 14, 2022
A very sophisticated piece if fiction, not a normal thriller at all. Actually a mix of Sebald and Stefan Zweig. People interested in great literarure will love this book. Readers wanting an average airport crime story… no. I love it, super interesting (especially if you like Walter Benjamin and Freud…)
October 6, 2022
This is a really fine novel.
It's based on a true, WW2 account of a German Jew (the author's grandfather) who escapes to Sweden.
I think some readers expected it to be a thriller, but it's much more nuanced and authentic than that, giving a fuller insight into the time, the world, and the real people who inhabited it.
It's based on a true, WW2 account of a German Jew (the author's grandfather) who escapes to Sweden.
I think some readers expected it to be a thriller, but it's much more nuanced and authentic than that, giving a fuller insight into the time, the world, and the real people who inhabited it.
November 4, 2022
I give the 1st half/two thirds of this book a 2, the last portion a 4. I found the first part disjointed and hard to follow. Quite a bit of the information seemed superfluous. At about page 170 or so, the story came together and was very intriguing.
July 2, 2022
I had a hard time following this book, however, I did listen to the audiobook version which may have led to some of my challenges in following the plot and/or narration.
July 19, 2022
Quite an exceptional book. Great story, complex and fascinating!
September 15, 2022
Fantastic storytelling. Happy i found this book! :D
September 16, 2022
Really good story!
September 24, 2022
Wonderful Book!
October 24, 2022
Vahest on arvustusi ikka vaja uskuda ja kõike kätte sattuvat mitte lugeda…
December 3, 2022
A strange book with some moments that are tough to get through, but the storyline kept me wanting to keep reading, and the afterward, strangely enough, made it all worth it.
January 8, 2023
Interesting and important story weakly told. The best part on this novel is the nonfiction afterword...
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews