This starts well, with strong first and second acts exploring the impact of Becky's father's denunciation of her fiance's father - the tense opening in Argentina and the trial in Israel are handled deftly, with an unflinching gaze on the darker recesses of both men's souls. The final act, told from a new point of view and describing Becky and Franz's later life, is slow and treacly by comparison. It's one thing to let your readers know that life doesn't guarantee a happy ever after, but to inflict this level of boredom is a bit much. Not a strong enough link to the main characters or thesis - feels like the publisher had a minimum word limit. ( )

This novel covers some of the same themes as the author's earlier A Question of Loyalties, in particular the clash between the generations involved in the Second World War and their children, and explores the theme of the effects Nazism had on both Germans and Jews and their descendants. The central character is a fictionalised version of Adolf Eichmann: here he is Rudi Kestner, an escaped Nazi living in Argentina in the early 60s. His son, Franz, who knows relatively little of his father's past, falls in love with Becky, daughter of a blind Jewish economist Eli Czinner, who has an unusual past in having been a senior adviser to the German Government until as late as the end of the 30s, before being sent to Auschwitz. Czinner recognises Kestner's voice when the families of the young lovers meet and sets in train a process that involves the capture of the latter, his dispatch to Israel and trial. The bulk of the novel details the effects of this decision on the members of the families and others. This was mostly quite gripping, though I could have done without most of the extended final section which documented the characters' love lives in later years.

There are some powerful points in the novel, for example:

one character's explanation for the popularity of Hitler: "He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody's personality, in an overwhelming degree, and that was another reason why they fell for him."

and an explanation as to how ordinary people can come to accept the deaths of millions:

"hatred is felt as liberation. When you hate, everything is permitted to you and you become an avenging God. It doesn't matter what the object of your hatred is: Jews, Arabs, queers, women, the poor, the rich, blacks. As soon as you admit your hatred you are filled with what I think must be exultation. The object of your hatred becomes automatically your inferior, your enemy, your prey." ( )

In Argentina in 1964 two young lovers, Franz Schmidt and Rebecca Czinner, children of German emigrés, decide to marry. When the two sets of parents meet, Becky’s father, Eli, a concentration camp survivor now blind, thinks he recognises something about Franz’s very affable father Rudi. Despite his reservations about all that the state of Israel represents and his past complicity as an economist with the Nazi regime, he contacts Jewish authorities in Vienna and Tel Aviv. The ramifications of this decision and of the continuing effects of the Holocaust both on individuals and on Israel are the backbone of the book.

Franz’s father disappears. His associates in Argentina reveal Franz’s father’s past to him and kidnap Becky and her friend in a bid to prevent Rudi’s transportation to Israel. It is too late, a trial date is set and the girls are set free. The love story here is a twentieth century variation on Romeo and Juliet but any animosity between the two families can barely be described as such.

The bulk of the book is set in Israel to where Franz has gone to support his father and try to understand his past actions. Becky joins him to avoid their relationship falling apart. They fall into the orbit of an Israeli journalist who speaks out against the trial. In a rather unlikely coincidence which stretched credulity, another journalist covering the trial turns out to be the former husband of Becky’s mother and the lover of a boy whom Franz had an affair with at school.

The inevitable outcome results and in a coda the lives of the main characters thereafter are described through the medium of Becky’s English cousin Gareth of whom up to then we had never heard.

The Holocaust is a sensitive subject and while Massie treats it obliquely he is clearly attempting to deal with serious issues. In this respect it is unfortunate that he renders the sentence Arbeit Macht Frei under which Franz’s father was photographed during the war with an “s” at the end of its first word. His control slips at times too. This humdinger of a sentence leapt out at me. The evening was spread out peacefully as they left the hotel, and looked for a taxi. This, with its strategically placed comma, can only mean, “The evening looked for a taxi.”

If I was to sum this up in one phrase it would be, densely written but flawed. ( )