Warsaw 1939: Lieutenant Konstanty Willemann, a bon vivant and dandy before the war, wanders through the bombed-out city that has just flourished, where the German occupation is stifling all freedom. Konstanty, himself German on his father's side, numbs himself with alcohol and morphine - for he is torn between his crippled father and his fanatical mother, and he is even more torn between his unsteady life with intoxicating nights with the Jewish high-class prostitute Salomé and worries about the future of his family, his wife and his idolised little son.
But then Konstanty joins the resistance. Disguised in his father's uniform and speaking impeccable German, he dares ever more risky actions and soon gets to know himself better - as a frighteningly different man. A conspiratorial journey with the inscrutable noblewoman Dzidzia leads him through a limbo of devastated landscapes to the still perfect Budapest. For Konstanty, the journey becomes a test of whether he can still escape the doom that has gripped Warsaw and threatens to sweep him away himself ...
Sensual and radical, Szczepan Twardoch tells the story of a fascinating, dazzling hero and creates a grand panorama of the time shaken by the first quake of the Second World War - full of memories of irretrievably destroyed beauty, full of unforgettable scenes of how Konstanty Willemann finds himself through a purgatory. A virtuoso, breathless and powerful novel.
"A novel that in its force and vividness leaves everything behind that is usually offered in the genre of the contemporary historical novel." Süddeutsche Zeitung
"What a book!" Die Zeit
"Boldly and enthusiastically, the author tells of the war as an unpleasant interruption of a bohemian life." Der Spiegel
