The Boys from Brazil

First published: 1976

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Science fiction—cautionary

Time of work: 1974-1975

Locale: Various cities around the world

The Plot

Ira Levin presents an intricate plot involving Dr. Josef Mengele (the “Angel of Death” from the Nazi concentration camps), who has set up a laboratory in Brazil. Yakov Liebermann is a Nazi hunter, based on the legendary Simon Wiesenthal. The two enemies finally confront each other in the United States, where the plot is resolved.

Only far into the book do readers learn the nature of Mengele’s plan, but there are intimations throughout. At a meeting of old Nazis, Mengele gives out the names and locations of ninety-four men who will have to be murdered within the next year. None holds an important position; most are civil servants or minor functionaries in government. They are spread all over the world. The Nazis are given new identity papers, passports, and money.

Unknown to Mengele, a young Jewish man interested in capturing Nazis has recognized Mengele and persuaded a waitress in the restaurant where the meeting is held to plant a tape recorder and to retrieve it for him. Mengele becomes suspicious, finds the waitress, and through her tracks down the young man, who is found in his hotel room playing parts of the tape to Liebermann. The young man is killed, but Liebermann has heard enough to pique his curiosity. He asks a friend at the Reuters news agency to note unusual deaths, and he travels to Germany to interview a woman who worked for Mengele during the war. She tells him enough to send him to a German scientist, who reveals that research is pointing toward the possibility of cloning a person from his or her cells.

Liebermann guesses that Mengele somehow has cloned Adolf Hitler and arranged for the ninety-four clones to be adopted. Each has the exact genetic code of Hitler, and each adoptive mother is married to someone unimportant, just as Hitler’s mother was. Liebermann begins to track down these families. All the boys look alike, with pale skin and dark hair, and all are impolite. Liebermann travels to the United States, where he expects the next assassination to take place.

Meanwhile, Mengele’s operation has been shut down by higher Nazi command, and the assassins have been called home. Mengele destroys his laboratory but intends to continue with the assassinations of the adoptive fathers. He also plans to kill Liebermann because of his interference. They meet at the home of one of the boys, whose father Mengele kills and tosses into the basement. When the boy comes home from school, Mengele and Liebermann are in a life-and-death struggle. The boy sends his dogs after Mengele because he has a gun. The boy figures out who has killed his father and orders the dogs to kill him.

Liebermann recuperates and makes one more stop in America. In New York City, he meets with radical Jews who know about the list of children that Liebermann carries. While they talk, Liebermann tears up the list and flushes it down a toilet, telling the leader that it is wrong to kill children, any children, and that simply because they have Hitler’s genes does not mean they will turn out like him.