Gripping, powerful and utterly addictive, Wolf by Wolf is an absolute must-read. Set in Germany 1956, the novel is an ode to what could have been had the Nazis won the second world war.
Yael is a victim of ‘Experiment 85’, a scientific method of torture created by the Nazis to convert those with dark skin, dark hair and brown eyes into convincing Aryans, using chemicals pumped into the blood stream. She is the first victim upon which the experiment works, but she is also something else, a skinshifter, a power formed by the combination of chemicals that filled her blood since the age of six.
Having escaped from the camp she was imprisoned in, Yael joins forces with an underground resistance group who have been plotting to bring an end to Hitler’s cruel regime by assassinating him. Using her skinshifting powers, Yael transforms herself into Adele Wolfe, the first female winner of the Axis Tour, a yearly race from Germany to Japan, passing through the countries which joined Hitler following the war. In this disguise, Yael completes the race, surviving perilous conditions, ambushes and something even more dangerous to her, the growing concern, and attention, of both Felix Wolfe, Adele’s brother, and that of her biggest rival, former victor Luka Löwe.
In this harrowing representation of what could have been had the war turned out differently, Graudin manages to create a spectacularly woven tale, composed of intrigue and loss. By telling the story from Yael’s perspective, Graudin gives readers an insight to the torture and violence victims of the brutal Nazi camps were subjected to, whilst managing to create, within the reader, a thirst to learn more. Throughout the slightly fantastical nature of parts of the novel, runs the thread of Yael’s loss, the knowledge that every day she must continue without those who meant the most to her.
The empathy that Graudin manages to write with is what gives the book its true finesse, and ensures that the plot retains its humanity, amongst the grit and bloodlust that are constants throughout. The realistic nature of the novel only adds more to it, creating a read that is knowledgable, fantastic, and completely unputdownable.
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