The first, earth-shattering sentence with which Delius opens his novel: "I was commissioned to kill at dusk, on the eve of St. Nicholas." German history has been Delius''s constant preoccupation and obsession, perhaps ever since he first became aware of his surroundings after his birth in the midst of World War II. He was born in Rome, where his father, a Protestant pastor, preached to German soldiers fighting on the Italian front, and he grew up in the Hesse region in the heart of Germany, receiving his education there at a time when Germans were trying to forget the Nazi past a little, to let the past go, and to build their state after Hitler''s war had reduced it to rubble. Resisting the forgetting or ignoring of the past would become one of the important themes of left-wing writers of that period, and it would also occupy Delius in his later works. In "Murderer for a Year" we read the monologue of a young man who wants to kill a former Nazi judge, who was acquitted of the charge of executing 200 people. We know that the novelist is talking about himself when he says: "Why can''t I live a free life without the dirt and demons of history? Why can''t I continue writing without being disturbed by anyone, to write long, beautiful, graceful and elegant sentences, and then the time will come, after twenty or thirty years, after the Germans have disappeared, or at least abandoned their rudeness, and after the Nazis have buried the Nazi spirit, then they will discover me and celebrate me, and then I will sit like Elias Canetti in one of the cafes of Hampstead Heath, and with a smiling look I will read the German newspapers..." Perhaps this is what Delius thought in his youth. However, he chose another path.
