Rachel Seiffert’s debut novel, The Dark Room, explored the impact of the Holocaust not on its victims but on Germans struggling to understand how such atrocities occurred. In her third novel, A Boy in Winter, she returns to similar territory, addressing ideas of passive culpability, complicity and the role individuals play in history. Her setting is a small town in Ukraine in 1941, recently overtaken by the Nazis. Seiffert uses several voices to narrate events over three days as the SS round up and murder the Jewish inhabitants. There is Pohl, a German engineer, whose conscience prohibits his collusion; Jewish teenager Yankel desperately trying to save his brother’s life; and Yasia who inadvertently becomes their saviour. Seiffert is a master at creating tension and empathy in a novel that turns on the nuances of human behaviour.
• A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert is published by Virago (£14.99). To order a copy for £11.24 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
