In the 1980s, the Bureaucracy eliminated all knowledge of the past in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. In 2030, Andre Gervais discovers two metal boxes containing manuscripts, diaries, and other personal papers that have somehow survived and asks an old man, John Wellfleet, to use these documents to discover the past. In doing so, Wellfleet learns the truth about two relatives: his older cousin Timothy Wellfleet, a Montreal TV journalist at the time of the 1970 War Measures Act, and his stepfather, Conrad Dehmel, a German scholar struggling to keep his Jewish fiancee and himself safe from Hitler's Gestapo. Hugh MacLennan skillfully juxtaposes the insanity of life in Nazi Germany, the political climate of Montreal in the 1980s, and the perspective of an old man looking back on the conditions that led to world destruction as the background to an unforgettable love story.
- ISBN10 0773586253
- ISBN13 9780773586253
- Publish Date 14 May 2014 (first published 15 December 1980)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint McGill-Queen's University Press
- Edition Revised ed.
- Format eBook
- Pages 388
- Language English