- This novel, based on historical WW2 events, is a superbly written and paced story of inspiring people surviving utterly evil experiences.
- The Jews of Eastern Europe are being rounded up and cruelly crowded into filthy cattle trains to be herded into concentration camps, principally Auschwitz in Poland.
- The central character, Lale, is a good-looking, educated and multi-lingual young man from Slovakia. He is selected by the SS to become the principal tattooist in the Auschwitz camp, burning numbers into the arms of thousands of new arrivals over several years in the early 1940's.
- We know what eventually happened to the prisoners, but Morris, in personalising it, brings it vividly alive. The starvation, the rapes, the constants beatings, the random shootings, Mengele's medical experiments and other evils, lead finally to the mass gassings and ovens. The capriciousness of the Nazis' evil is ugly. Morris, with unsentimental clarity, makes the reader feel it.
- However the main focus is the beautiful love story between Lale and Gita. The power of love in the midst of evil provides a ballast, as do the friendships between the prisoners. Morris handles this tension superbly.
- I have read many fiction and non-fiction books about Nazi Germany and the fate of the Jews, and must say that this novel is one of the best. I can't recommend it highly enough.
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