With this book I definitely had the case where I fell in love with the book cover but was disappointed with its content. Having been attracted to the beautiful edition in a bookstore in Athens, I was expecting a bit more from a book that was advertised as having been translated into more than thirty languages and having won multiple awards. What I have seen some other fellow reviewers mention, was how it had something Kafka-esque to it, which I do agree with to a certain extent. It was a story with a short time span, taking place during just two different days, examining the relationship between two secret service agents and their captured suspect. This is done both through outside observation, as well as by diving into the minds of each of the characters.

I loved diving into the world of the various international book covers, you can find some examples of them above and below. Each of them portrays a different part of the story and it was impressive to see the variety of how it was interpreted for each translated edition.

I don’t know whether the book had its style and choice of words from around the time it was originally published in the 1960s in Greece but there was something bizarre about it. Some strange expressions were used that didn’t sound natural in English, which left me wondering whether the translation was well done. I took this as a reason to reduce the rating by one point.

He made to continue, but didn’t proceed. That unbelievable stomach pain came over him. Like a finger prodding his stomach hard.

p. 32

“I wish I could learn to play chess, find a gentleman to teach me. How I like it! And in general I like all games; I’m crazy about games,” and she smiled of suggestively.

p. 88

It was quite difficult to get into it, it needed concentrated effort to keep track of what was happening in the story and I had to re-read the beginning a couple of times. The first person narrator changes frequently and when just starting reading, it was really hard to understand who was who.

I have been able to spot multiple mistakes (repetitions of words, punctuation, words missing), which is a pity, since the edition I bought was first published in 2018 and re-published in 2023, which would have left enough time to correct them. This brought along the second reduction in the rating. Additionally, the dialogues had a weird feeling to them, not sounding natural at all, you can find an example below and due to that point, we were down to the rating of 2/5 ★.

“Your kiss is somehow different!” he told her. “A very strange taste. First time I’ve encountered it.”

“Yes?” she said, as if surprised. “And tell me, my sweet, how do you find this new taste?”

“I’d say it was… very piquant!” […]

“Let me tell you that I’ve just come from the dentist. I went for a little filling. As for the taste you mention, which you find so piquant, it’s the mouthwash, my sweet.”

p. 23

Even though those were the opinions of the characters that were expressed within the book, I’m still not a fan of female objectification. With that criteria, the whole thing slipped down to 1/5 ★.

“A tasty little thing, I agree. But when she lifted up her hand to fix her hair I could see her bra under the armpit and it was dirty. Probably sweat, and it made me sick. I can’t bear a woman whose underwear isn’t spotless.”

p. 89

In general, I felt like the book read much more like a play rather than a novel, me being able to imagine the individual scenes on a theatre stage. It seems to only have been adapted into a movie in 1975 though, “La Faille” by the director Peter Fleischmann. It somehow reminded me of the book “Night Boat to Tangier” by Kevin Barry, which concentrated on two male characters, similar to the way it was done within “The Flaw“. It also took place during a single day and I wasn’t a fan of it, having rated it with 2/5 ★ in 2020. The only thing that made the whole story more enjoyable were a couple of passages that were a bit more philosophical or which had touching observations about them:

He had his pen in the right-hand pocket of his jacket, but he didn’t want to draw with ink. Ink is neutral, expressionless. In such a medium, how could he express what he wanted to express? […] But a pencil is a warm, heart-felt thing.

p. 22

They fell silent again. It was a pleasure interval. […] Ten minutes or a quarter of an hour of silence brought them back on form. As if they’d had a shower and felt refreshed.

p. 40

All in all, there was somewhat of a lack of depth to the characters in my point of view. Even though the ending gave them somewhat of a more humane aspect, not enough of a relationship was built up between them and the reader. I could see this book being more appealing to those, who have a higher level of curiosity towards political topics, for me, I was more interested in the author’s life than this story. During his lifetime, he worked as a civil servant in the labour ministry and he was sentenced to death in 1944, due to his political resistance activities. He finally managed to escape, go into hiding and write many other stories after that (Holton, 2003). Whereas I wouldn’t recommend “The Flaw” and especially not this edition of it, you might have more luck going for some of his other books.

★★☆☆☆ (2/5)

_{Edition: ISBN 978-618-5048-77-8
Aiora Books, 2023 (first published in Greek in 1965)}

Sources:

English book cover: Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13633235-the-flaw. Last accessed: 17/10/2023.

Greek book cover: Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12987394. Last accessed: 17/10/2023.

Hebrew book cover: Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18096033. Last accessed: 17/10/2023.

Holton, D.: “Antonis Samarakis” (2003). The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/aug/16/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries. Last accessed: 18/10/2023.

Italian book cover: Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35704346-lo-sbaglio. Last accessed: 17/10/2023.

Persian book cover: Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/355125. Last accessed: 17/10/2023.

Portuguese book cover: Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36158086-a-falha. Last accessed: 17/10/2023.