News of the unending stream of brutality, violence and carnage in America; the daily killings, the mindless shooting of children and adults, the pushing of folks into the path of oncoming trains and other traffic, police brutality and the vicious partisan struggle for political power, brings to the mind of the outsider the subtitle of Hans Habe’s book about his travel across the American continent in 1963; ‘Anatomy of Hatred, The Wounded Land, Hans Habe, (George C Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1964)
“The Wounded Land” speaks of this sensitive European-American writer’s tender feelings for his adopted country as he traversed it with his wife and experienced America as an outsider. Habe, a Hungarian, had fought for France at the start of the Second World War and became an American citizen in 1941. A successful novelist and social commentator, Habe’s “Our Love Affair with Germany”, has been selected by scholars as being “culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.”(quote from The Book Depository).