The Game of Opposites

"Again, this book is by someone who is appearing at Jewish Book Week, which, again, is why I have been reading it. It is set in post-war Germany, although the name ‘Germany’ is never mentioned. However, that is clearly the country. And it is the story of a man who is a prisoner in a concentration camp . Right at the end of the war he escapes from the camp and is sheltered in a nearby village. This suggests that people are being noble and brave in sheltering him but in fact it is just one family that takes him in and he stays there after the war and marries into the family. The villagers are considered by other inmates of the prison camp to have been anything but decent towards them but the protagonist has a very successful post-war life, ultimately becoming mayor of the village and turning it into a prosperous town. Well, he does meet up with other inmates from the concentration camp who have very different post-war experiences. I suppose they are rather accusatory towards him for having done so well. Both these books show this considerable degree of acceptance of the circumstances which is something you don’t often hear about that much. Of course, there was a great deal of acceptance going on in the post-war period; people had to get on with their lives."