Face of Janus

Face of Janus opens as its protagonist, a discharged American soldier in post-World War II Paris, falls in love with a prostitute who dizzies his senses. During the course of their relations, she entrusts him with the diary of the chief of the Nazi Sicherheitspolizei (security police). The secrets enclosed in the diary summon the superpowers to the scene, as each struggles for dominion over Europe’s bleeding body. But is the diary authentic? Who is actually benefiting from the high-risk interrogation of the book’s protagonist?

Varshizky gifts us with a thriller that is also an enquiry into the eternal question of the sources of evil. The book’s narrative twists, like its characters, between conflicting sources and opposing muses, and the Gothic architecture that it embellishes embodies chronic human ambivalence. The book’s twists and turns and its Gothic architecture brilliantly embody the chronic ambivalence of the human condition.