Lind, Jakov. Landscape in Concrete. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Pocket Books, 1968.
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- Reviewed Work(s): Landscape in Concrete by Jakov Lind and Ralph Manheim; Ergo by
- Jakov Lind and Ralph ManheimWeimar, Karl S. “Novel: A Forum On Fiction.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 2, no. 2, 1969, pp. 171–173. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1345400.
In Landscape it is a deranged giant of a man who had deserted because he feared he was going to be discharged. He roams through occupied Europe seeking to find his buddies and to return to the business of killing. With grotesque irony Lind moves his sick anti-hero towards the cure: the sanity of the peacemaker (in a crazy barroom brawl), the semblance of a love that is more than carnal (for a Valkyrie of a whore who after having Bachmann has a torrid dream of being seduced by a lesbian), and the willingness to be discharged. At this point the sergeant is overtaken by the official military diagnosis: health, excellent; orders, return to his unit at once. Stunned and bewildered he is prepared for the final "cure": the bombs of an air raid destroy his woman and derange him again. "He bared his long yellow teeth, buried his nose still deeper in her neck and bit into her throat. Then he stood up and marched off toward the East, toward the war, to search for his regiment once more." So the novel ends. (Page 172 Jakov Lind)
