Expect No Mercy

Expect No Mercy Synopsis

To an unnamed city in an unnamed country comes an unnamed rural family, left bereft and indebted by the sudden death of the man of the house - a jovial spendthrift. Though unguided by names, we are clearly in Berlin in the years between Germany's unification in 1871 and the economic collapse of 1929-1933, compressed to a one-generation timeline. The city, its industrial class, its hand-to-mouth underbelly, the debt-ridden family itself, emerge with astonishing reality from a vivid narrative moving effortlessly from authorial viewpoint to interior monologue.

The central figure is Karl - eldest son, skilled at every rural task and at sea amid the very different urban milieu. To make sure of him as the family breadwinner; his mother beaks his will. Karl climbs from apprentice in his uncle's furniture factory to owner, husband of a trophy wife, father of two accessory children.

As social tensions mount, Karl must decide either to continue with his fraud of a life, or attempt to follow the path not taken as a teenager when his mother stopped him from absconding with an anarchist friend. He tries but fails to make contact with rebel forces in open rebellion against the government. He is killed.

Tautly composed and written (compared with the expansive epic novels) Expect No Mercy provides incomparable insight into the tragedy of German history in the 19th and 20th centuries.