Skeletons at the Feast, by Chris Bohjalian

This novel turns the subject of survival during the Holocaust and escape from Germany on its head. Instead of refugees fleeing from Germans, it has fascist Polish aristocrats, fleeing from Allied and Russian forces. Instead of a Jewish protagonist suffering in a death camp, it features a Jew who denies his identity in order to reach safety. Instead of an Allied soldier standing up to the enemy, one of the main characters is a Scottish prisoner of war who avoids the fighting altogether. Simultaneously, Bohjalian places these unusual characters in the well-documented, conventional setting of the last days of Germany in WWII. (Continue reading…)