An extraordinary exploration of evil and culpability recording actual events and characters narrated as a memoir by an educated, cultured but fictitious senior SS officer. If ordinary men, through a sense of duty, loyalty and ambition, desensitised by war, participate in organised systematic genocide, what happens to a psychologically damaged man in the same situation? Is the seed of evil within us all and how would we act in order to survive, personally and as a nation? A harrowing and disturbing masterpiece! Winner of Le Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française and the Prix Goncourt in 2006
(Denise Lewis - bwl 76 Spring 2015 ) |