When Otto’s only son is killed on the front line, he is spurred to drop anti-Nazi postcards around Berlin with his wife…but how long until the Gestapo track them down?

I’m not sure this would have been on my radar if it hadn’t been September’s #AroundTheWorldBookClub21 choice. It was a brutal read, so I can’t really say that I “enjoyed” it, but I am glad I read it. There’s a rawness to it, which I think comes from being written just after the war. It explores resistance by and complicity of ordinary people, and whether futile acts of resistance matter. What I found particularly interesting is that Otto is not likeable, he isn’t driven by strong ideological convictions, he was ambivalent about the Nazis until his son was killed (he even voted for them), yet still engages in an act of resistance, contravening the usual heroic resistor character. I think we are all aware of the horrific treatment of Jews by the Nazis, but I found their brutal treatment of the German populace quite eye-opening, as well as the suffocating climate of fear that was circulating, even amongst non-Jews - it was refreshing to read a different narrative of WWII, since English-language WWII fiction is saturated by the Holocaust (an important story, but not the only story) or the (usually romanticised) French Résistance. I did struggle with the dramatic slowing of the pace and relentless brutality in the second part - it did work as a reflection of the plot, but it was tough to read. The edition I read had a fascinating afterword about the author and also Otto and Elise Hampel, the inspiration behind the book. A brutal, eye-opening read, exploring resistance, complicity and futility.