A NUMBERS GAME

In late 1944, an SS soldier working at a concentration camp faces the chaos of World War II’s final months in Fenstermacher’s historical thriller.

Gottschalk began his military career in the SS with some enthusiasm, eager to please and climb the hierarchical ladder. However, after seven months serving as a blockführer—he’s in charge of a group of concentration camp inmates—he’s becoming dispirited by his work, so much so that he earns the nickname Gloomy Gottschalk. (“Looking in the mirror I had never really noticed any inherent sombreness, but to call my visage radiant or buoyant would be equally inaccurate.”) He’s stunned when he's summoned to the “mansion,” the residence of the camp’s highest ranking officer, Liebehenschell, for reasons that are left ambiguous. When Gottschalk arrives, he is flummoxed by what he finds: Liebehenschell is mysteriously absent, apparently replaced by Katznelson, a man he has never heard of and who seems to lack any semblance of military bearing. The widely feared Robert Mulka, another officer in attendance, shows unabashed contempt for Katznelson, a disgust only further accentuated by Mulka’s drunkenness. Viktor Copesius, the camp physician, presides over this inexplicable meeting, depicted with terrifying clarity by the author. The meeting culminates in a card game designed to determine who will play what role in a game of Wilhelm Tell: In short, someone will be shooting something off someone else’s head. This surreal gathering takes place on the last day of 1944: By this point, it’s clear that the war is all but over and Germany’s cause is lost. The madness that eventually takes hold in the narrative is the product of both the Nazis’ failure and the ensuing chaos—all taking place in a grimly discomfiting concentration camp setting portrayed with unflinching attention to detail by the author. The figure of Gottschalk is the weakest part of this otherwise penetrating novel—blockführers were notorious for both their barbarism and their stupidity, and he defies both these characterizations. Nonetheless, this is an artfully chilling novel, as suspenseful as it is intelligently grotesque.

A bewitching, often spine-tingling historical novel, clever in its conception and execution alike.