Funeral in Berlin | Techniques

Funeral in Berlin Techniques

In Funeral in Berlin Deighton makes advances in varying his narrative point of view, while continuing to use the anonymous agent as his principal spokesman. The format of the novel begins with a page of quotations taken from Allen Dulles, Premier Khrushchev, R. Southey, Einstein, and R. Lewisohn. Then comes the title page and fifty-one chapters of narrative and description primarily in discourse form. Each chapter is dated in diary or dossier form and is headed by a paradigm or rule concerning the playing of chess. The novel ends with six appendices on poisonous insecticides, West German Intelligence (Gehlen); German Army Intelligence (Abwehr) ; Soviet Intelligence; French Intelligence; and the British Official Secrets Act and its amendments. The narrative point of view is changed in Chapter 2 to the third-person omniscient to disclose the reflections of Hallam; it is changed in Chapter 10 in the same way to reveal the...
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