Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

I had been meaning to read Mother Night for the past fifteen years or so ever since I saw the film version. Eventually I was able to pick up a dirt cheap copy at a used book sale maybe five years ago. And just now I got around to actually reading it. So between purchasing it and reading it I probably read some 200 other books... and that seems weird even to me since it is such a short book and is by one of my favorite all time authors, Kurt Vonnegut. But it was worth the wait because I think current political events colored how I read it.

In the introduction Vonnegut says "This is the only story of mine whose moral I know ... We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." The book then proceeds to be the "confession" of Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American living in Germany during WWII that helped spread Nazi propaganda with his radio program. What only a handful of people really know is that Howard is actually using his program to send out coded messages back to the Allies. But of course he can never tell anyone this and after the war he has to live in seclusion and deal with being a white power icon and being hated by most everyone else that knows his history. He continually sees the power his words had on influencing some disturbed people even though he was trying to help his country. So maybe if you have a political voice that can be heard by millions of people and you use it to spread hatred and fear of other racial groups that kind of makes you a racist.

Also, it mentions Don Quixote.  I'll give it an A.