ZEELAND: or Elective Concurrences

As intriguing as its title, this new novel by veteran author Koning is at once a coolly ironic indictment of man's inhumanity to man, a touching love story and a provocative philosophical statement. When Michael Beauchamp, a young American captured while fighting with the British early in WWII, escapes a German prison camp and attempts to find safety across the French border in Spain, he is unknowingly following the same route taken by his grandfather, Michel, 70 years earlier. The elder Beauchamp was arrested as a Communard in 1871 and sentenced to death in Paris. After a series of adventures, he found succor for a time in a monastery in Perpignan. Unaware of his grandfather's history, Michael reaches the same monastery in 1941 with a Jewish woman who's hiding from the Gestapo. Koning's spare and impeccable language, his taut narrative control and his impressive grasp of detail are the scaffolding on which he builds his double tale of grandfather and grandson. In juxtaposing the two men's tragic destinies, he elaborates on the idea of "elective concurrences," whereby intense past emotions or acts of will influence subsequent events; Michael's story is thus ruled by his grandfather's. If there is fault to be found in this ingenious tale, it's that Koning's imagination provides too many plot twists. All are logical, but the zigs and zags of fortune come at a dizzying rate. Meanwhile, the reader's adrenaline pumps nonstop, responding to the perilous situations and to the protagonists' thwarted attempts to reach the women they love—surely a recommendation for what should turn out to be this distinguished writer's breakout book. (Oct.)

FYI:In conjunction with the publication of Zeeland, New South will launch a series of reprints of all of Koning's novels, beginning with The Affair.