An Infinity of Mirrors

An Infinity of Mirrors

First edition hardback cover
Author	Richard Condon
Language	English
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	September 11, 1964[1]
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)

An Infinity of Mirrors was the fifth and most ambitious book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon. First published by Random House in 1964, it is set in France and Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, as seen through the eyes of a beautiful, rich Parisian Jew and her beloved husband, an old-fashioned Prussian army general. What unfolds is an almost unrelievedly bleak depiction of the rise of the Nazis and the Third Reich .

In spite of a few moments of typical Condonian gayness and insouciance, the overall tone of the book is of foreboding, incipient horror, and the impending doom of the Holocaust. After publishing four novels from 1958 through 1961, Condon was already widely known as the author of The Manchurian Candidate and was the subject of a so-called "Condon Cult". He then took three years to research the historical background of An Infinity of Mirrors and bring it to publication.

All of Condon's earlier books were replete with unexpected moments of violence and gratuitous death but none can compare with An Infinity of Mirrors' account of mass murder. Perhaps because of the unquestionably depressing nature of the book, it attracted less critical acclaim than his earlier works and did not noticeably expand the Condon Cult. The term "Holocaust" is not used in the book, as it was far less common in 1964, but Condon gives the reader an extremely grim picture of its origins and some of the practical details involved in its bureaucratic, yet evil, execution. The book was not a commercial success and, unlike three of his first four books, was never made into a film.