I have to admit, if I hadn’t been reviewing this book I probably wouldn’t have finished, but that said, I’m almost glad I did. The story starts when Joseph Nikolai Rubashov, a compulsive gambler, challenges the Devil to a game of poker on New Year’s Eve 1899. He loses, and forfeits his soul: the Devil curses him with immortality and gives him an indestructible contract. Being a gambling man, Rubashov sees an excellent opportunity to make some serious cash and spends a while challenging people to destroy it and making them pay up if they can’t. He gains minor celebrity status in Russian roulette dens shooting himself in the head, not dying and building up a small fortune. 

For a while everything is peachy: Rubashov invests in lots of companies, falls in love with the perfect woman, buys a lovely big house, has a child despite his wife previously being infertile and generally lives the life of Riley. Then one day everything starts to go wrong - his businesses plummet, the child develops a severe disability and then his whole family dies in a fire. Cue the real start of the book, which sees him travelling across Europe for over a hundred years, encountering all sorts of famous figures and events along the way.

History-lovers might take much more from this novel, with its in-jokes and subtle references; but you don’t need a specialised knowledge to get something out of it. Though a word of warning: you might have unusual dreams. The book is filled with nightmarish scenes, time-changes and fairytale-like characters. Rubashov’s travels take him through Nazi Germany, the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Bosnian/Yugoslavian war. Much of it is horrifyingly gruesome as Rubashov bears witness to some of the most horrendous events of the 20th century. Vallgren is graphic in his exploration of these horrors, and his brutal and unforgiving descriptions of death, rape, murder and war-mongering are at times hard to bear. After an horrific explosion in a Northern Irish playground, Rubashov puts his hand to his face only to find that stuck to his cheek is ‘...the pink tongue of a child, in which a tooth was embedded, like a sliver of almond in a sponge cake’. In Serbia, a baby he has rescued is speared by soldiers who then brutally rape him and set the house he is in alight.

The immortality question is addressed well, and is one of the more successful parts of the book. Vallgren conveys Rubashov’s sense of dread at being condemned to eternal life, along with his desire to be set free. In a time when we are constantly trying to extend our lives, it is fascinating to hear the story of someone who so desperately wants to die; as his documenters say, ‘He is a case study in the mechanisms of suicide, he symbolises the wretchedest of the wretched: those who want to die but cannot’. Rubashov tries several times to kill himself, once even by trying to blow himself up in a nuclear explosion, but nothing works.

As an immortal, Rubashov has a choice: adopt a solitary life or take the risk of forming relationships, knowing those he forms bonds with will eventually die and leave him alone to start again. He experiments with both; falling for a woman who is snatched away from him and then spending years in solitude living in the strip between East and West Berlin with only hares for company. By now, the reader might be filled with sympathy for this poor creature; however I failed to warm to him. The character gets lost a little amongst constant war, death and destruction, whilst the fast and furious nature of the narrative makes it easy to disconnect from the story and its characters. We watch Rubashov from a distance, and never focus in for the reader to really feel his pain. Despite the distressing nature of the events, I often felt numb.

Vallgren’s Devil is difficult to work out. Part bumbling bureaucrat, part multi-form being; outside of time with the ability to change history along with a penchant for nicely organised files, this Devil enjoys documenting the lives of those it has had a part in destroying. He does, however, have a more predictable sinister side in his apparent disregard for human suffering. That is, until the end of the book, when for some reason it goes slightly awry. Without giving away the ending, the Devil reveals some pitiful and very un-Devil-like characteristics which really let the book down and make for a dreary and predictable close.

There’s some fantastic imagery and beautiful language in the book, but while some parts are fascinating and genuinely absorbing, others are ultimately skip-able. There are several references to pre-determined destinies and other-worldly elements, which are irritating since they distract from the genuinely horrific events that were going on. So much time and so many events were covered but in such a short space of time and as a result in not much depth, which is very frustrating. It serves well as a whistle-stop tour of the horrors of the 20th century, but if you’re looking for a little more depth to the history, you won’t get it here.