Talk:The Final Solution (novel)

Aga Khan Prize for Fiction
This article says that the story won the 2004 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction but the article on that subject says that Annie Proulx won that year's prize, for "The Wamsutter Wolf", and that "The Final Solution" won the 2003 prize, so I'm changing the date in this article. Russ London 20:15, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

What do the numbers mean ?
The article says that there are clues to what the numbers mean, but that the solution is never known to the characters. What is the answer? (I've read it, and am still mystified) Oh, and the metacritic link is dead. This is not one of the Chabon books listed —Preceding unsigned comment added by Excelis4 (talk • contribs) 11:14, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Concentration Camp identification numbers. Seemed fairly obvious to me. 86.176.190.75 (talk) 23:34, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Hardly. It's clearly explained on the last page: the boy, like most boys of the Trainspotting age, simply read off the numbers of trains that passed, and the parrot picked up on them. It's a MacGuffin; the numbers had nothing to do with codes, Swiss bank accounts, or concentration camps. (It seems very unlikely that Linus would have seen large numbers of numbered concentration camp cars, in any event.)MariaMitchell (talk) 13:57, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Being unable to speak, the boy was unable to provide, on demand, his ID number. The parrot was trained to perform this service.173.72.63.96 (talk) 01:46, 24 October 2016 (UTC)Hans Wurst

Obergruppenführer
When describing SS rankings, the "Herr" (roughly equivalent to sir) title is unnecessary for two reasons. The first being that the SS - in particular the Waffen-SS - had the philosophy that the use of "Herr [insert superior rank here]" conflicted with their political philosophy. Secondly, the only time that a SS senior officer would be addressed as "Herr [insert rank here]" would be in direct conversation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.62.75.28 (talk) 14:11, 12 September 2012 (UTC)