Office politics can be murder, particularly in our era of cubicle rage. Such politics are particularly poisonous in “The Exception,” Christian Jungersen’s provocative attempt to link bureaucratic ambition and genocide.
Set in the Danish Center for Information on Genocide, Jungersen’s ambitious, exhaustive philosophical thriller focuses on the relationships between friends Iben and Malene, who are genocide researchers and commentators, and their associates, the librarian Anne-Lise and the secretary Camilla.
Moving in and out of their respective work spaces are weak male bosses who, like their female underlings (and sometime lovers), also wage interpersonal civil wars.
Triggering the plot are e-mailed death threats to Iben and Malene that at first lead them to suspect a Serbian war criminal whose career they are familiar with through their research. But when their inquiry proves fruitless, Iben, who’s been traumatized in a horrible hostage situation in Nairobi, and Malene, an arthritic who’s nevertheless a siren, shift their suspicions to the relatively happily married Anne-Lise. Camilla, meanwhile, bends to the prevailing wind.
Jungersen swings his narrative among the four women, giving each an opportunity to tell what she thinks is the true story. By submitting such different versions, he builds tension and character. By giving each her own viewpoint, Jungersen also diffuses the impact of his protagonists, forcing the reader to contemplate the bigger picture.
Here, Iben recalls what it felt like to be a hostage, drawing parallels between her frightening quandary and the Nazi hone of genocide:
“Iben remembers that the first time the Hamburg reservists were ordered to kill the inhabitants in a small Jewish town, each man in the battalion had to escort one Jew to the place of execution in the forest. Once there, he had to shoot the prisoner and then return to get another Jew. These minutes alone with the victim, walking along the forest path, maybe exchanging a few words, were enough to make it much harder to kill and many had given up. Others were plagued by terrible nightmares afterward.
“The battalion officers quickly learned to plan the killings differently. At later massacres, the soldiers never had a moment alone with the Jews. The rule was to make the victims seem like one large, anonymous horde. The German concentration camps were run on the same principle. Shaved, starved and filthy, the prisoners were bound to be less unsettling to the German camp staff because the inmates seemed not quite human, and this made it that much easier for the camp guards to get on with their work.”
Jungersen builds his drama carefully, interspersing the narratives of the women with data about and analysis of actual genocides in Germany, Poland, Rwanda and Serbia. Iben and Malene are the strongest conduits of his vision, particularly Iben, who skirts insanity as her experience in Nairobi begins to bleed into her current apprehensions.
There is death, here, and darkness. Jungersen’s sharp, disturbing book reminds us that evil is everywhere, and while you can track it down, you can’t stamp it out. Especially if it lives within you.
Cleveland freelance writer Carlo Wolff is the author of “Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories.”
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FICTION
The Exception
By Christian Jungersen
$26
