That nasty F word rears its ugly head once again when Fascism takes center stage in a brilliant new novel, A Brutal Design, by Zachary C. Solomon. Set somewhere in Eastern Europe, shortly after the murder of his parents during the Holocaust, Jewish architectural student Samuel Zelnik, is unexpectedly arrested. Given the option between being deported to a “gulag” or “freed” to work as an architect in Duma, a Utopian commune where he can express his vision for a better future, his choice is predictable. Samuel opts for Duma.
On arrival somewhere in a desert, Zelnik’s expectations are immediately shattered. Instead of being allowed to express his creative architectural ambitions, Zelnik is assigned work in a bleak factory. He is then, summarily placed in a uniform in line with other robotic co-workers, endlessly assembling pipe-fittings. Nobody knows how these assemblages would be used. Certainty not the dull, defeated co-workers! They could care less about anything. What Zelnik feels is a prevailing malaise, hardly the utopia he was promised, clearly a misfit in this, so-called, “model society”.
Rather cautiously, Zelnik begins to scout his vast new domain seeing colossal structures of overpowering design, predominantly built of concrete and glass, with buildings reminiscent of the no-frills, “brutalist” school of architecture with which he is familiar from his harrowing past. In addition, his former teacher Professor Miriana Granoff,an avant-garde artist, of extraordinary talent, seems to have a strong influence on Duma’s art world and much to Zelnik’s surprise, she too resides in Duma.
Excited and eager to connect with Granoff, Zelnik stumbles across a small wooden structure resembling an office. Its contents—blueprints of cells, lamps with skin colored shades, swastika cuff-links, a Luger pistol, iron keys—Zelnik recognizes are objects which frighten him greatly. Discomfited and terrified by what Zelnik perceives are Nazi memorabilia, he reads a Memorial Plaque,naming his former Professor the “Aufseher” an overseer or supervisor of the entire structure. How does this seemingly,bizarre work of art hold sway over the citizens of Duma? Is Samuel Zelnik just another cog in a scheme to resurrect the reign of terror, a mere flunky caught in a sinister project for a “resonant callback” to fascism?
Unsettling, at times surreal, A Brutal Design mines the potential power of art and architecture. Novelist Zachary C. Solomon skillfully demonstrates how each shapes our perceptions. Chilling and profoundly relevant.