Foreign cars # 15

The strategic alliance between IBM and the Third Reich lasted from Hitler's first weeks in power until the end of World War II. Nazi-subsidized IBM specialists developed technologies that made it possible to quickly and efficiently identify objects, catalog information, and carry out sampling according to specified parameters. In total, about 10 years were spent on this work. The creator of the corporation, Watson, was awarded one of the highest awards of Nazi Germany.

Historians have always been surprised by the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis identified Jews in Western and Eastern Europe - despite the fact that the Nazi regime as a whole was chaotic, lacking strict internal organization. As soon as the search parameters were established - the anthropological signs of the race to be destroyed - the Reich was faced with the task of destruction itself, which required solving a lot of problems of a purely informational nature and computational power comparable to the power of a modern computer.

What IBM proposed was its prototype. It was a punch card-based technology aimed at collating and organizing census data; It was thanks to her that the punitive system of the Nazi regime worked like clockwork. IBM technology was used by Hitler at all stages of the genocide: from identifying and registering Jews to organizing concentration camps.

IBM tried to anticipate the wishes of customers. Essentially, calculating machines were not traded directly: the devices were rented, and in addition, IBM provided technical support, providing the Nazis with media - that is, punched cards with already processed information.

John Grisham became famous for his action-packed works about litigation. It was this unfortunate circumstance that forced the author to promise in the preface that there is not a single lawyer in the new book - living or dead. Instead, the reader is treated to a seemingly quiet, contemplative story set in Arkansas in 1962. It's harvest time on the Chandlers' 80-acre cotton farm, and the family hires two sets of workers - Mexicans and "hill men." Seven-year-old Luke also works in the field with his family and hired workers, through whose eyes everything that happens is shown - including a quarrel that ends in murder. "The Painted House" is emphatically autobiographical, which takes it from the category of action-packed thrillers to the rank of normal books about normal, human things. In particular, about the fact that all childhood ends sooner or later.

into Russian ,” was translated At the very beginning of Amy Tan’s fourth novel ( the first, “ The Joy and Luck Club ), two stacks of pieces of paper covered with Chinese characters fall into the hands of the heroine. On one pile it says “Things I know to be true,” on the other: “Things I shouldn’t forget.” The author of the notes is the narrator's mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. The sheets of paper tell the story of herself and her family.

The heroine of the novel makes a living by writing books from the Do-It-Yourself series. She is a ghostwriter: not a single cover has her name on it. She knows little about the fate of her own mother: she has never been particularly interested in it. However, she hires a translator to help her understand the notes. For once in her life, she decides to just listen to her mother. In such a strange way.

The story she reads is the central part of the book, both compositionally and semantically. This is a story about a remote village in China, where Li Lin is from. The text is full of threatening and mysterious symbols: a cave where, according to legend, the remains of a dragon rest; the End of the World gorge, where the bones of the nanny Li Lin are scattered; a curse placed on a family by a local doctor who makes potions from human bones. And betrayal, at the cost of which Li Ling gets rid of the curse.

On one of the ordinary, unremarkable days (oatmeal for breakfast, conversation about nothing, an inarticulate scene outside the window), Lauren’s husband went to his ex-wife, where he shot himself.

After his funeral, Lauren moves into the house she and her late husband rented for the summer. There she discovers a man of indeterminate age - and probably mentally disabled; he has been living in the house for several weeks. Lauren doesn't kick him out just because it seems to her that something in his behavior reminds her of something, but she doesn't understand what exactly or what exactly. And even when the mysterious man begins to role-play the conversations that the couple had a week before Lauren’s husband’s suicide, imitating their voices, she still doesn’t understand what’s going on. Either this is the reincarnation of her late husband, or the weak-minded person is simply repeating accidentally overheard dialogues, not realizing their meaning.

The author does not give a clear answer either. Instead, DeLillo lets the heroes float freely, leaving on their conscience the questions of what of what is happening belongs to the past, what to the future, what to life, and what to death.

Kirill Kutalov-Postoll