When a friend recommended this book to me she said it was a page-turner but not enjoyable. I must say I found this to be an accurate assessment of a beautifully written but ultimately disturbing book about Nazi Germany. It has a deceptively simple style and its starkness is wholly appropriate to the subject material. The book is in three distinct parts. The middle section is a harrowing read which I found profoundly moving. The vivid images haunted me long after I had finished this book and I commend it to anyone interested in the ravages of war from `the other side'. Pain, degradation, misery, shame, outrage, cruelty, courage - all these are universal. And universal is the endurance of the human spirit with its capacity for transcending all adversity.