num_pages: 202
description: Behind bars in a new jail in old Jerusalem awaiting trial for war crimes, Howard W. Campbell Jr writes his confession. He is an American by birth, a notorious Nazi radio-propagandist by reputation, a U.S. Counter-Intelligence agent in fact.For fifteen years after his flight from defeated Germany, Campbell hides out in a ratty attic in Greenwich Village, playing chess with his foxy, alcoholic neighbour George Kraft, until an article in The White Christian Minuteman dredges him from obscurity. Hotly pursued by hordes of avenging Israelites and by Bernard B. O'Hare, a dispatcher of frozen-custard trucks looking for a raison d'être, Campbell takes sanctuary with the Rev. Doctor Lionel J. D. Jones, D.D.S., D.D. - the anti-Semitic, anti-Negro, anti-Catholic all-American fascist dentist - only to find himself for a communist kidnapping. Campbell's Blue Fairy Godmother - the only man alive who knows him to be a hero - intercedes to rescue him but, inevitably, he gives himself up to a reluctant representative of the state of Israel. This mournful, macabre and diabolically funny tale of unsung heroism uses acrid humour to undermine the horror of its themes. It is one of the blackest comedies ever.
language: English
title: Mother Night
titlecomplete: Mother Night
characters: Howard W. Campbell Jr.
genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Historical, War, American, Humor, Literature, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 91831
publisher: Jonathan Cape