By the Jakob Wasserman Prize–winning author of The Guilt of Others: a “deeply moving” novel of a small German community torn apart in WWII (Le Monde).
Combining the immediacy of reportage with emotional intensity and imagination, The Inventory is “a book of extraordinary suggestive power” that explores the effects of Nazi paranoia on every segment of German society (Berliner Zeitung). Gila Lustiger weaves together the tales of ordinary people swept up in a catastrophic chapter of history.
Amid the routine of daily life—with its flirtations and quarrels, longings and disappointments—the mechanism of persecution spares no one. Intersecting stories reveal entwined relationships in a nation where no one is untouched by suspicion and fear; where housewives become both informants and saviors; where even children become protectors and abusers.
Considered a contemporary classic in Germany, The Inventory is “one of the most powerful testimonies we have to the gathering storm that annihilated a whole population” (The New York Times).
“Like Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, Gila Lustiger’s The Inventory offers a tapestry of German society.” —Le Monde
