faber and faber, 2004, 238 p. Translated from the German Im Krebsgang by Krishna Winston.

On 30^th January 1945, the twelfth anniversary of Hitler achieving power, Paul Pokriefke, the narrator of this novel, was born. This was exactly fifty years after the birth of one Wilhelm Gustloff. On 30^th January 1945, a former Strength through Joy ship named after this Nazi “martyr,” a ship now packed with refugees – mostly women and children but with some wounded soldiers aboard – fleeing the Red Army advance into Germany, was sunk after being hit by three torpedoes fired by the Soviet submarine S-13, delivering its cargo of humans, dead or not yet dead, into -18^oC temperatures. Paul’s nine months pregnant mother was one of the passengers. The shock turned her hair white.

That sinking comprised the single greatest loss of life in one event in maritime history, even if the exact number who died can never be known. Yet years later “it still seems as though nothing can top the Titanic, as if the Wilhelm Gustloff had never existed, as if there were no room for another maritime disaster.”

So how, especially as a German, does a writer approach this tangled topic? Though their losses have been acknowledged, victimhood has not traditionally been claimed for German casualties of the Second World War. Still less afforded to them. How could a near contemporary of the perpetrators of the biggest set of crimes in history (certainly modern history) dare to?

Calmly, soberly, authoritatively and novelistically, it turns out. But also obliquely. As Grass asks us via Paul, “Do I sneak up on time in a crabwalk, seeming to go backward but actually scuttling sideways, and thereby working my way forward more rapidly?”

So, embedded in the tale of Paul’s existence – forever dogged by the circumstances of his birth – we have the life story of “the martyr,” Wilhelm Gustloff, born in Schwerin in 1895, who joined the Nazi party and recruited over 5,000 members from German and Austrian citizens living in Switzerland, where he was killed by a man named David Frankfurter, who claimed to have fired the fatal shots “because I am a Jew.” And that of the submariner, Aleksandr Marinesko, who commanded the S-13. Plus details of the construction and dimensions of the Wilhelm Gustloff (originally to have been named after Adolf Hitler but changed at his request to that of the Nazi’s latest martyr,) its Strength through Joy cruises with no class distinctions between its passengers, its use as a hospital ship in the Norway campaign and later as a military and refugee transport.

Paul, always fatherless – several men were subsequently implied by his mother to be possible candidates – is haunted by that thrice cursed date, as was his mother. Her accounts of the sinking and his birth vary, however, and like Paul’s fatherhood are not to be trusted. Paul’s lack of a father possibly led to his estrangement from his own son Konrad (Konny) whom Paul suspects, in a ramification of how that fateful January date echoes through his life, is behind an internet site named the Friends of Schwerin which lauds the memory of the ‘martyr’ and the ship which bore his name. He follows the online spats that result between Konny and a supporter of Gustloff’s killer (calling himself of course David Frankfurter) with something between bemusement and frustration.

Grass does not flinch from, but neither does he overly dwell on, the sinking – a catalogue of errors on the part of its officers, at the time the Wilhelm Gustloff had astonishingly no less than four captains each arguing with the others – and its many horrors, nor on the grisly prospect of being overrun by the Red Army. The German reoccupation of Nemmersdorf had revealed how brutal Soviet revenge could be. Publication of its details in Germany, intended to stiffen the population’s resistance, instead led to streams of refugees fleeing westwards.

Despite never mentioning the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their cohorts, nor does he try to exculpate his countrymen, “History, or, to be more precise, the history we Germans have repeatedly mucked up, is a clogged toilet. We flush and flush, but the shit keeps rising.”

As to the fatalities; in retrospect, “One zero more or less – what does it matter? In statistics, what disappears behind rows of numbers is death.” Each death, even in a larger catastrophe, is an individual tragedy.

At the heart of this novel – and it is a novel despite all its statistics and historical details – is the impossibility of escaping history. The circumstances of Paul’s birth, that sinking, toll through the years, Konny’s distance from his father and closeness to his grandmother manifesting itself in an almost wilful obsession, unamenable to reason and leading to yet more tragedy.

Paul feels it. “Everything that I try to crabwalk away from, or admit to in relative proximity to the truth, or reveal as if under duress, comes out, as he” (Konny) “sees it, ‘after the fact and from a guilty conscience.’”

For history is personal. Perhaps only the novel can deal with it.

Pedant’s corner:- In the preamble; versitilty (versatility.) Otherwise; “never miss an chance” (a chance,) “the planned invasion of England, Operation Seal” (that operation’s code name was Seelöwe, Sealion, not Seal,) Ruanda (German spelling of Rwanda?) “With August Pokriefke might there have been trouble” (‘With August Pokriefke there might have been trouble’ is a more natural word order,) an extraneous end-quotation mark, botswain (x 2, boatswain,) “with premediated deliberateness” (premeditated?)

Abacus, 2012, 222 p. First published 1996.

I wasn’t at all sure about picking this up, still less reading it, because its ostensible subject matter – the sinking of the Titanic – is such well-worn ground. Any misgivings were soon assuaged however as the quality of Bainbridge’s writing is apparent from the start. Moreover, the voyage and the sinking are almost incidental to the plot which focuses – as do all the best novels – on human relationships. The book also incidentally acts as a portrait of the lifestyle and relatively vacuous activities of the moneyed classes who occupied the Titanic’s first class cabins and salons.

Narrator J Pierrepoint Morgan has an interesting past – his mother married someone of whom her family disapproved and she was estranged from them. His parents both soon died and he spent some time in an orphanage before being plucked from there and brought up by his aunt. He also has connections with the Titanic’s shipbuilders and so worked for a while in the drawing office at Harland and Wolff.

We meet him in London a few days before the ship’s departure when he witnesses the death of a man in Manchester Square and shortly thereafter removes a portrait of his mother – by Cézanne no less – from his cousin’s house. The dead man we later learn is connected to others of the ship’s passengers. Also prior to boarding Morgan comes across a man named Scurra. On the ship he falls for the attractions of a woman called Wallis Ellery, and encounters Rosenfelder, a dress designer anxious to have Adele Baines (travelling separately in steerage to allay suspicions of collusion) show off his creations in a bid to secure a contract to supply stage costumes in New York. Luminaries are mostly in the background but occasional appearances are given to naval architect (and Titanic’s designer) Thomas Andrews, plus White Star Line chairman Brian Ismay. The former died while the latter famously survived the sinking.

Scurra is the fulcrum of the book. In some respects a mysterious figure his function is ultimately to provide Morgan with a measure of world-weariness, at one point telling him that, terms of dealing with women, it’s, “Every man for himself.” Morgan’s relative innocence is underlined by his informing us that, “Later I was to remember that moment; I had mistaken a part for the whole.”

On the vagaries of love we have the declaration that, “‘When a woman declares she has made no demands you can be sure she believes she’s owed something,’” on the importance of circumstance, “There is no way of knowing how one will react to danger until faced with it. Nor can we know what capacity we have for nobility and self-sacrifice unless something happens to rouse such conceits into activity.” When the crisis comes Morgan acquits himself well.

The book is well researched, the descriptions of the ship’s state rooms and interiors ring true and a visit to the boiler room allows the details of the engines’ capacity to be dropped unobtrusively into the ongoing scene. (This is how information dumping ought to be done.) Recurring mention is made of a fire in number 10 coal bunker – due to inadequate hosing down of the coal – which may potentially have weakened the cast iron of the ship’s hull but no-one is at all alarmed and in any case most likely made no difference to the ship’s fate. The references some of the characters make to the speed of the ship’s progress and possible breaking of the transatlantic crossing record would have been a genuine point of interest. That they are qualified at one point by the phrase “barring accidents,” is no more than what is likely to have been said on board at least once (the ship’s “unsinkable” tag notwithstanding.) The well-documented inadequacies of the provision of lifeboats and the organisational chaos attending the sinking are dealt with matter-of-factly and not overplayed. In the writing hindsight is not given any part.

Every Man for Himself is excellent stuff, if overall slightly lacking in conveying emotion.

Pedant’s corner:- “Time interval” later count – about ten. (I didn’t start counting till after I’d noticed a few.) Othewise; Mr Andrews’ (x 2, Andrews’s,) Fenwicks (was possessive, so ‘Fenwick’s’,) Miss Baines’ (Baines’s,) Thucydides’ account (Thucydides’s.)