The great strength of the novel is Kerr’s overpowering portrait of the war’s horrors. Its perhaps inevitable weakness is that we sometimes lose our way amid the avalanche of carnage, suffering and duplicity. The glue holding it all together is Bernie himself, our battered, defiant German Everyman...Bernie’s a-plague-on-all-your-houses mind-set leads to the novel’s truly shocking ending, one that left me with no idea what lies ahead for him, only the devout hope that his story will continue.

While some might quibble over occasional long sequences of dialogue that would be better served with tags, Kerr writes Gunther as he should be—world-weary, sardonic and as independent as an introspective man might be as he ricochets between murderous criminals, hell-bent Nazis or revenge-minded communists.