Reaction to The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. was mixed . Anthony Burgess in The Observer called it " astonishing " , Christopher Booker of The Daily Telegraph described it as a " powerful piece " , and English author A. S. Byatt said it was a " masterpiece " . In Explaining Hitler , Ron Rosenbaum called The Portage " A Frankenstein story " , referring to Steiner 's fictive Hitler has having taken on a life of its own . Writing in Time magazine , Otto Friedrich described the book " a philosophic fantasy of remarkable intensity " , adding that by not refuting Hitler 's speech , Steiner deviates from the horrors of traditional Holocaust literature and ends the book " on a note of bleak ambiguity " .