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''ドイツ語:Vergeltung'' ("Retaliation" or "Payback") is the second novel of the writer Gert Ledig (1921-1999). It is an apocalyptic autobiographical anti-war novel. It mines the author’s own experiences and is considered an important example of the Literary realism genre of postwar novel. The book was originally published in the fall of 1956, by the long established Frankfurt publishing house S. Fischer Verlag. It deals with 70 minutes of a mid-night bomb attack by the American air force against an unnamed Germany city towards the end of World War Two, during which a large number of civilians and military personnel are killed. The events are described from both the American and German perspectives with great directness, and without shielding the reader from the horrific details. Ledig’s first novel ''ドイツ語:Die Stalinorgel'' (''The Stalin Organ'') which dealt with the battles of the Russian Front, in the Leningrad region, had been an international success. By contrast, ''Vergeltung'' was widely rejected by readers when it appeared in 1956. The book was quickly forgotten and there were no plans for a reprint. That changed in the late 1990s, shortly before author’s death, when the book encountered a much more widespread acceptance, led by scholar-critics including Max Sebald, Marcel Reich-Ranicki〔(Interview mit Marcel Reich-Ranicki: "Die Literatur ist dazu da, das Leiden der Menschen zu zeigen" ) Der Spiegel, 24 July 2003〕 and Volker Hage.〔(Deutschland im Feuersturm: Berichte aus einem Totenhaus ) Der Spiegel, 1 April 2003〕 ''Vergeltung'' now acquired a correspondingly wider readership, with several new editions published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 1999 and subsequently. Translations followed into Dutch (entitled ''"Vergelding"'') in 2001, English (as ''"Payback"'') and French (as ''"Sous les bombes"'') in 2003, Spanish (as ''"Represalia"'') in 2006 and Croatian (as ''"Odmazda"'') in 2008. At the same time a new interest in Ledig’s literary output emerged among critics and readers, which would outlive the author himself. In effect, shortly before he died Gert Ledig found himself “rediscovered” by the literary establishment. == The storylines == ''Vergeltung'' deals with the fates of the inhabitants and defenders of an unnamed German city and of an American bomber crew that has approached the city in a formation of bombers. In total twelve story-lines can be identified, all connected with the air attack, and all given more or less equal weight, even though they differ greatly in terms of their more detailed narratives. Eight of the twelve story-lines focus on a single character or group of characters. For instance, during the attack the bomber is shot down by a German fighter-plane and the crew are forced to evacuate. The American pilot, named "Sergeant Jonathan Strenehen", having survived a crash landing, falls into the hands of some Germans and is gruesomely abused physically, contrary to the provisions of to the Geneva Convention which guarantee the "bodily integrity" of prisoners of war. This occurs despite Strenehen having taken care to crash land his bomber on a public cemetery in order to spare the civilian population - something of which his German captors are unaware. Later two German civilians do come to help Strenehen, but in the end he nevertheless dies as a consequence of brutal treatment received from German civilians whose sadistic actions can be traced back to their awful experience of the aerial bombings. Other story-lines concerns the fate of the suicidal Cheovski couple, a rescue squad, a group of forced laborers from Eastern Europe, a war-shattered lieutenant from a "Flak squadron", a group of drunken soldiers and a man looking for his family driven almost mad by his predicament. Another of the threads presents a young woman driven to an air-raid shelter by the bombs and later raped by an old German man, reacting under the exceptional circumstances, and who himself later commits suicide. Four other story-lines each focus on just one scene or circumstance. These concern an air defense position, a coordination command post, a huge concrete bunker along the lines of those that existed only in the largest cities such as Berlin and Vienna, and a transformer station for the municipal power supply. Interestingly, with the exception of Sgt. Jonathan Strenehen, who is the mostly fully formed of the protagonists and whose fate is spelled out, it is generally left for the reader to decide which, if any, of the participants in the various story lines survive the bombing raid. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vergeltung」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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