The Year Is '42

In this intimate novel about ordinary lives lived under the extraordinary circumstances of war, we meet Karl Bazinger, a sophisticated Wehrmacht officer who is living the high life in Occupied Paris. With his French girlfriend, his glamorous dinner companions (Coco Chanel, Jean Cocteau, and a suspected spy for the British), and his open disdain for the Nazis, Karl begins to attract the attention of the SS. He is drawn into further trouble when he receives a suspicious visit from Hans, his best friend from Saxony, who may be involved in resistance activities. To lower his profile, Karl requests a transfer to the Eastern Front and sets off on a journey into a very different experience of war.
As a terrible fate for Hans is sealed, Karl is posted to Kiev, where he discovers the extent of the Nazi atrocities in the region and begins to suffer from a mysterious nervous ailment. In the novel's final twist, the ministrations of an "enemy" doctor--a beautiful, stoic Russian woman with her own painful history--will heal Karl and offer him a vital connection to hope and goodness in the midst of hell.
The Year Is '42 communicates the enormity of war with immediacy and intelligence. Urbane, subtle, and elegiac, this small masterpiece captures the myriad gradations of moral position that war demands of those who serve, those who resist, and those who stand and wait.

"From the Hardcover edition.