Austria 1938, and a small rural community is about to be changed forever . . .
Oskar Voxlauer is in flight from his past - from his bourgeois Austrian upbringing; from horrific memories of fighting on the Italian Front in 1917; and from the twenty years he has spent in the Ukraine watching his Bolshevik ideals crumble and the physical decline of the woman who taught him about love. In 1938, he finally returns the the small Austrian town of his birth where his mother is waiting to greet a son she hasn't seen since he was a boy.
But, despite Oskar's attempts to live a reclusive existence as a gamekeeper up in the hills, he cannot escape the tensions that are threatening the tranquil town of Niessen. Hitler marches into Austria and the Blackshirts come to the valley. Voxlauer watches his Jewish friends being hounded. The only things saving him - a "Red" and a "Yid lover" - from the attentions of the SS seem to be the respect of the community for his parents and his growing love for the mysterious Else Bauer, cousin of Obersturmfuhrer Kurt.
In his extraordinary first novel, John Wray has produced a hymn to the beauty of the Austrian landscape and an acute portrait of the dark side of Austria's past. He has a subtle and human understanding of the intricacies of history, with rich complex characters and a stunning quality of prose.
