Cesare

On a windy night in 1937, a seventeen-year-old German naval sub-cadet is wandering along the seawall when he stumbles upon a gang of ruffians beating up a tramp, whose life he saves. The man is none other than spymaster Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, German military intelligence. Canaris adopts the young man and dubs him ‘Cesare’ after the character in the silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for his ability to break through any barrier as he eliminates the Abwehr’s enemies.

Canaris is a man of contradictions who, while serving the regime, seeks to undermine the Nazis and helps Cesare hide Berlin’s Jews from the Gestapo. But the Nazis will lure many to Theresienstadt, a phony paradise in Czechoslovakia with sham restaurants, novelty shops, and bakeries, a cruel ghetto and way station to Auschwitz. When the woman Cesare loves, a member of the Jewish underground, is captured and sent there, Cesare must find a way to rescue her.

• Uncompromising literary novel captures the madness of Nazi Germany in a fiercely inventive merging of fiction and fact
• Author of over 50 novels including the Isaac Sidel series and still going strong at 82 years old
• Visually arresting and atmospheric cover design
• For fans of Babylon Berlin, Luke McCallin, The Lives of Others, Philip Kerr, David Young, Joseph Kanon And Otto Dix
• Feted by fellow authors such as Michael Chabon, William Giraldi, Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates And Larry McMurtry