After a nuclear war

Press, 25 June 1983, Page 18

After a nuclear war

God’s Grace. By Bernard Malamud. Chatto and Windus, 1983. 223 pp. $16.95. Bernard Malamud is one of America’s best known writers, with eight novels and several collections fo short stories to his credit, but this latest novel “God’s Grace” is a startling departure from his earlier works. Set in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster it tells of Calvin Cohn, sole human survivor of man’s capacity to destroy. “At the end, after the thermo-nuclear war between the Djanks and Druzhkies, in consequence of which they had destroyed themselves and, madly, all other inhabitants of the earth, God spoke through a glowing crack in a bulbous black cloud to Calvin Cohn, the paleologist, who of all men had miraculously survived in a battered oceanography vessel with sails, as the

swollen seas tilted this way and that.” Cohn’s debates with God are clever, allusive and very funny; one is grateful for the relief of humour as Malamud proceeds with his grim fable. Cohn’s boat drifts to a tropical island where he finds a band of chimpanzees. His and their efforts at communication and at achieving a life of harmony on the island seem at first to meet with success, but it is not long before rivalry, envy and hatred destroy the island community. Cohn’s attempts to act as a father and leader to the chimpanzees are doomed to failure and the ironic and horrifying ending is typical of the book with its grim humour, its feeble glimmer of hope, and its dark pessimism. “God’s Grace” is a remarkable novel which examines human (and animal) behaviour with a penetrating and cynical eye. — Margaret Quigley.