In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowi erer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual.
When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. Still, despite many moments of genuine emotion-the encounters between Harry and Lena, the appearances of the surprisingly sympathetic Miller-the characters in general are wooden embodiments of ideas who fail to lend plausibility to a disjointed plot.Īn unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.īased on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. Throughout, Wright highlights his characters' need for mentors and guides-from Nick's idolization of Oliver to Davey's awe of his colleague Harry-as well as their latent capacity for violence. But after Davey manages to reunite Judy with her daughter, other bizarre developments unfold: Oliver concocts a scheme to kill Davey that ultimately backfires Loomer, Miller's possible successor, brings Davey to a secluded island for a strange mock trial happily married Harry finds himself courted by his nostalgic old lover Lena and Miller Farm, armed for what its population believes to be an impending Armageddon, edges toward confrontation with the local townspeople. Davey Leo, a peaceable academic who hopes to win Judy's love by proving himself a hero, follows them there. Oliver and the baby end up at the rural New Hampshire commune of Miller's ragtag followers. Animated by distrust of Judy and a wish for power, Oliver is a cut-rate Raskolnikov who's inspired the fanatical loyalty of a lonely retarded man, Nick Foster.
Only too late do Harry and his daughter Judy realize that the child has fallen into the hands of the cult to which Oliver belongs-a group led by Miller, a man who claims to be God. The events here, described from multiple points of view, are set into motion when Harry Field, an elderly professor looking after his baby granddaughter, allows Oliver, the child's absentee father, to take her to the park. A metaphysical thriller by the author of, among others, Telling Time (1995), this one about the human need for gurus both religious and secular.
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