The Bunker Diary

If you like to suffer for nothing, do yourself a favor. But otherwise, don't read this. I feel sick just talking about it.

Summary

It won't take long. A psychopath we know nothing about locks 6 strangers in a bunker. He gives them food via an elevator, until he doesn't give any more. Impossible to escape. Everyone ends up dead. What we read is the diary kept by one of the prisoners. This is it.

Impressions

I had heard about this book via a podcast a year or two ago. The hosts talked about this book with enough enthusiasm that I was seriously intrigued and kept it in my head all this time. They said it was a striking, original book, and they refused to reveal the "punch" to reserve the "fun" for the readers. (Yes, lots of quotation marks.) They weren't the only ones who loved it. On the back cover, I could learn that the book won the Carnegiemedal. The Times declared that it was "Monumental" and that "Everyone should read this novel." We also learn that it has been the subject of much controversy because of its violence and radical nihilism. Admit that it makes you want to read it.

I really like the phrase "radical nihilism": it's the best description of the book I could have given. The "punch" was revealed to me simply by flipping through the book, as anyone does on occasion. The odd format of the last few pages jumps out at me: the chapters get shorter and shorter, just a few lines. Not too difficult to understand that this is not because the narrator managed to escape and lives happily with his wife and children.

It is therefore a long and painful read where we watch six characters, more or less endearing, with more or less depth, lose little by little all the meager hope they had to escape. At the slightest attempt to escape, they are severely punished: no more light, no more heat, no more food, deafening noises in the middle of the night. At the end, one is downright nauseous: it seems that their jailer has forgotten them. There is no food at all, no heating, and eventually, no water.

I kept my hopes up until the end. I tried to stay positive. I kept telling myself that the fact that there wasn't really a story was original in itself. Until the last page, I was hoping something surprising would happen, anything. But no. It ends like this. Everyone died of thirst, hunger and cold.

It's terrible. It's heartbreaking. It's profoundly unnecessary. Everyone should not not read this book. And the translation was pretty bad. I admit that it has the quality of not leaving anyone indifferent.