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| | ROSA: A Novel by Jonathan Rabb |
 | | But an anonymous source (Rosa’s lover, Leo Jogiches), a helpful scientist (Albert Einstein), an avant-garde artist (Käthe Kollwitz), the thuggish behavior of the Political Police (Polpo), and his own skeptical intelligence will lead Hoffner in a different direction, where he finds radical politics, reactionary bloodlust, and Romantic poetry too. |
 | | Rabb, on the other hand, gives us a dreadful Berlin, a sinister Polpo, the sound of boots, the smell of corpses, patterns of guilt as runic as lace gloves and city streets, and a ghostly noir that could have been conspired at by Raymond Chandler and André Malraux. |
 | | Leo Jogiches even sounds like Malraux: "I can’t choose when or how I die, Inspector, but I can choose why.” |
| www.randomhouse.com /crown/rosa/praise.html (540 words) |
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