Some historical events are so tumultuous they will form the basis of books, fictional and factional, for centuries to come: the Nazi genocide of the European Jury is one such event and, as recent exceptional novels prove, there is always another side of the Holocaust worth examining.

The Draughtsman is the second novel by the gifted but slightly eccentric Robert Lautner, a writer whose wide-ranging CV equips him to write on – well, almost everything.

The Draughtsman is a work of literary fiction which can be appreciated by almost everyone and on almost every level. Set in 1944, we learn not every able-bodied German was automatically drafted into the War Machine.

Recently qualified and newly married draughtsman Ernst Beck has been unemployed for many months when he is offered work by Topf & Sons, one of Germany’s most prestigious engineering firm. His job is to design ever-more efficient crematoria for the labour camps, whose workers are being decimated by dysentery.
Beck is a ‘good German’: non-political, he just wants to earn enough to support himself and his wife Etta. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing though, and when he learns the true nature of his work, Ernst reassesses his loyalties, and his life. ( )