Wave

7.12.2015

Tod Strasser. A wave.
Moscow, Scooter: 2013

This story is based on real events that took place in a regular California school in the 1970s. The students told the teacher that Nazism was impossible now. In order to convey the childish principles of the functioning of the Nazi regime, history teacher Ben Ross creates the Wave movement. His ideology is based on formulas of obedience and discipline borrowed from Hitler's Germany. In just a few days, the school turns into a true totalitarian community, whose members are ready to follow their leader with appalling obedience. The situation is getting completely out of control, and Ben Ross no longer understands how to put an end to this madness.
The book can be discussed during extracurricular reading at school among children aged 14-16. You can talk about it in history and ethics classes. It can be recommended to a class that has signs of mobbing or bullying. The book is based on the film Experiment 2: The Wave, which is much tougher than the book. I recommend that parents and teachers watch it with their children and discuss it.

Writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya about the book:

“Catastrophic changes occur very quickly in a person's soul, and only culture can withstand the madness of fascism that can break out in the most seemingly prosperous society. An amazing, pessimistic experiment. An important warning.

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