First published 2007
Conrad Senior receives an unexpected inheritance from his former Oxford professor, Elya Mendel. The papers reveal Mendel's friendship with Axel von Gottberg, a German aristocrat who joined the failed plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. Von Gottberg died hanging from a meat hook after the conspiracy collapsed. Senior becomes consumed by the documents, which tell of two young men whose bond shattered in pre-war Jerusalem. Two cousins, Rosamund and Elizabeth, arrived in their lives and created a love triangle that destroyed everything between them. As Senior digs deeper into this sixty-year-old tragedy, his marriage to Francine begins to crumble. The more he learns about Mendel and von Gottberg, the more his own life mirrors their story of friendship poisoned by desire.
Genres: fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Jerusalem, Oxford
Period: Pre-War, 1944
Hardcover · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Content warnings: death