The Song Before It Is Sung: A Novel

The novel is, at its core , a beautifully imagined take on the life of Adam von Trott, one of the July 20th plotters against Hitler. Von Trott exemplifies personal bravery, patriotism and commitment. While von Trott's patriotism and mystical inclination leads to a certain amount of self delusion, his involvement in the plot makes complete sense, even if he may have fooled himself into overstating the likely benefits of success. The novel is also an account of von Trott's friendship with Isaiah Berlin, but this is far less successful, principally because the Berlin of the novel is such an ordinary person, regardless of his intellectual attainments. The account is supposedly written by a former student of Berlin, Conrad Senior, to whom Berlin leaves his papers relating to von Trott and their friendship. At various times in the novel Senior asks himself what Berlin hopes he will accomplish with this material, and comes up with various answers, but I believe the true answer is obvious: Berlin hopes that von Trott will receive his due. The writing is quite good, and I also enjoyed the relationship between Conrad and his wife. The wife is most definitely sympathetic even as she ends their marriage.

It may stray somewhat from history, but it is a novel, and despite not adhering strictly to the facts of the friendship between Berlin and Von Trott, The Song Before it is Sung offers a very moving, unusual take on German nationalism during WW2. Beautifully written, engaging and worth owning.

Wonderful book, justly praised as a masterpiece by LA Times and amazing by National Post. Do read this. It's about the War and two friends, one German one English. Utterly moving and convincing, on love, patriotism, the war, and about obsession. How can anyone write a novel this good and not be totally famous? Please, please give yourself a treat, as the Wall St Journal said.

This book has the most off-putting first page I think I have ever read. Never mind: it quickly gripped my attention. It is quite avowedly about the relationship between Isaiah Berlin, the Jewish Oxford philosopher, and Adam von Trott, the German aristocrat who had been a Rhodes scholar in Oxford and, while there, had been a close friend of Berlin's. Von Trott was a patriot for the "real" Germany, abhorring the Nazis, but feeling deeply the humiliating loss of German territories at Versailles. Back in his own country, he worked first as a lawyer, joined the Nazi Party because he had to, and then joined the German Foreign Office. Hoping to avoid war, he had secret contacts with the British ministers encouraging them to stand firm against Hitler. When war came and the Nazi regime unleashed its full brutality, he took part in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, and was hanged. It escapes me why Cartwright indulges in the nonsense of calling the protagonists Elya Mendel and Axel von Gottberg, and I do not intend to follow his example. He gives different names to several other historical characters: to Maurice Bowra, the Warden of Wadham (here called Lionel Wray and made the Warden of All Souls); to the American Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter (here called Michael Hamburger); to the Socialist Hans Leber (here called Franz Liebherr); possibly to Pastor Schönfeld (Pastor Schönborn); and to von Trott's wife. So one wonders which of the other people in the book are hidden behind false names and which are simply Cartwright's inventions. It was Bonhoeffer and Schönfeld, not von Trott, who contacted Bishop Bell of Chichester in Stockholm in 1942. There are evocative descriptions of the von Trott family estate in Mecklenburg, but in fact the von Trott's family estate was in Hessen, and Cartwright says in his acknowledgments that the Mecklenburg estates he visited in researching the book belonged to the family of Count von der Schulenburg, another of the 1944 plotters against Hitler. And Henry Hardy, who has spent a life-time working on Berlin's papers, writes that von Trott's execution was not filmed, although the recovery of this film is one of the climaxes of the book. Several reviews have criticized the liberties taken by this fictional account not only of such details but also of the relationship between the two men, liberties some of which go beyond the imaginative reconstructions that we find in many excellent historical novels. I think the reader should know all this. He can then perhaps put that knowledge behind him, and read the book as a work of fiction inspired by but not reliably based on historical facts. This will be difficult if he knows the material well. In 1934, back in Germany, von Trott had written a letter to the Manchester Guardian protesting that he could see no discrimination against the Jews; and of course this letter had deeply upset Berlin. It did not totally destroy his friendship for von Trott, but he cou