Publishers Weekly
10/23/2023
The riveting if rushed latest from Albom (The Stranger in the Lifeboat) explores the legacy of the Holocaust on the Jewish community in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 1943, canny SS officer Udo Graf manipulates 11-year-old Nico into encouraging his neighbors to board a train to be resettled with their loved ones. When Nico sees his parents board the train, he realizes he’s been tricked. He soon learns the train was headed to Auschwitz, and is wracked with guilt. After the war, Nico settles in Los Angeles under another name. In a parallel narrative, Nico’s older brother, Sebastian, who blames Nico for sending their parents to their deaths, is searching for Nico as well as former SS officers. Albom is at his best tracing the brothers’ trajectories after the war, describing how Sebastian comes to marry Nico’s crush, Fannie, and portraying Fannie’s unrequited love for the absent brother. Unfortunately, Albom races through the climactic final act, set in 1983, when Nico plans to return to Thessaloniki for an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the first Auschwitz transport, and Sebastian, working with a Nazi hunter modeled after Simon Wiesenthal, is hot on Graf’s trail. Still, this adds up to a weighty examination of the Nazis’ lies and their lingering consequences. Agent: David Black, David Black Literary. (Nov.)
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-09-21
Truth and deception clash in this tale of the Holocaust.
Udo Graf is proud that the Wolf has assigned him the task of expelling all 50,000 Jews from Salonika, Greece. In that city, Nico Krispis is an 11-year-old Jewish boy whose blue eyes and blond hair deceive, but whose words do not. Those who know him know he has never told a lie in his life—“Never be the one to tell lies, Nico,” his grandfather teaches him. “God is always watching.” Udo and Nico meet, and Udo decides to exploit the child’s innocence. At the train station where Jews are being jammed into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, Udo gives Nico a yellow star to wear and persuades him to whisper among the crowd, “I heard it from a German officer. They are sending us to Poland. We will have new homes. And jobs.” The lad doesn’t know any better, so he helps persuade reluctant Jews to board the train to hell. “You were a good little liar,” Udo later tells Nico, and delights in the prospect of breaking the boy’s spirit, which is more fun and a greater challenge than killing him outright. When Nico realizes the horrific nature of what he's done, his truth-telling days are over. He becomes an inveterate liar about everything. Narrating the story is the Angel of Truth, whom according to a parable God had cast out of heaven and onto earth, where Truth shattered into billions of pieces, each to lodge in a human heart. (Obviously, many hearts have been missed.) Truth skillfully weaves together the characters, including Nico; his brother, Sebastian; Sebastian’s wife, Fannie; and the “heartless deceiver” Udo. Events extend for decades beyond World War II, until everyone’s lives finally collide in dramatic fashion. As Truth readily acknowledges, his account is loaded with twists and turns, some fortuitous and others not. Will Nico Krispis ever seek redemption? And will he find it? Author Albom’s passion shows through on every page in this well-crafted novel.
A captivating allegory about evil, lies, and forgiveness.
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