Random Acts of Heroic Love
by Danny Scheinmann
Transworld HK$132
Recently selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club in Britain, Danny Scheinmann's first work of fiction is all but guaranteed best-seller status in 2008, and, in truth, it would have a fair chance of success even without the plug. Based on the author's own family history, Random Acts of Heroic Love is the sort of epic, historical love story that has movie adaptation (probably by Anthony Minghella) written all over it. The novel opens in the not-so-distant past: it's 1992, and Leo Deakin wakes up in a South American hospital. Deakin has little idea where he is or how he arrived there. All he knows is that he's dazed and bruised, and his girlfriend, Eleni, is dead. As the mystery slowly unravels Deakin is drawn back in time - to the first world war - and a man whose fate seems inextricably linked with his own. Moritz Daniecki survived the Great War, only to find himself abandoned outside a Siberian POW camp with little hope of returning to the woman he left behind in Ulanow, Poland. There is more than a touch of Nicole Krauss' The History of Love in Scheinmann's readable tale: it has time-crossed lovers, velvety prose and a story so emotionally saccharine you occasionally feel in need of a dentist. Whether this is a good or bad thing is entirely up to you.