The Prisoner

The novel opens in August 1933, just a few weeks after ‘Crooked Cross’ ended. Set mostly in Munich, it describes the lives of the Kluger family as Nazism strengthens its grip on Germany: we watch as Erich’s commitment to the Party grows, while Helmy’s struggles to accept its strictures threatens to be the family’s undoing. This is a most unusual and unforgettable novel: an English woman, and therefore an outsider, writing about two perfectly ordinary German men who become, or are meant to become, implacable Nazis – as early as 1933.