Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

The Third Man by Randolph Splitter ’68

March 1, 2022

Tags Alumni Book

(Kirksville, Mo.: Golden Antelope Press, 2022)
Described as a “story of dispossession, refuge, and the search for justice and humanity,” this novel focuses on two Jewish families in the impending days of the Holocaust — specifically a little girl “kindertransported” to England to be raised by a foster family and a butcher’s apprentice who changes his identity and escapes to England to join the British Army.

The publisher notes, “The novel could be complete and coherent without its ‘third man’ frame, but the Prologue and Epilogue references to the famous 1949 noir film are distinctive and imaginative; they deepen the significance of the several other episodes. In the end, [the male protagonist] recognizes the similarities between himself and the film’s Harry Lime (as grifters who sometimes did questionable things). But he also identifies with his own ‘third man, the one he has tracked with revenge in mind. He recognizes that this man might have been evil, but might instead have been a ‘poor fool like himself, neither good nor evil, just a confused human being trying to muddle his way through this life.’”

The novel is inspired by Splitter’s family. His parents fled Vienna in 1938 a few years before his birth. He is a retired English professor who has written screenplays, made short films, and published short stories, novels, and a psychoanalytic study of Marcel Proust.