The Glass Pearls

Description

This thrilling tale of an ex-Nazi surgeon hiding in plain sight in 1960s London by the celebrated filmmaker is a lost gem with ‘the morbid tension of a thriller’ (introduced by Anthony Quinn, author of Curtain Call and Our Friends in Berlin).

‘At once a wonderfully compelling noir thriller and, more significantly, an audacious and challenging act of imagination. A tremendous rediscovery.’ William Boyd

‘This extraordinary novel had me hooked from start to finish, and left me with so much to brood on that I felt giddy … A fascinating, morally complex, deeply unsettling read.’ Sarah Waters

‘A dark and harrowing window on the past: the ending will haunt your dreams. This is a novel that should never be forgotten again.’ Janice Hallett

Nothing is more inviting to disclose your secrets than to be told by others of their own …

London, June 1965.

Karl Braun arrives as a lodger in Pimlico: hatless, with a bow-tie, greying hair, slight in build. His new neighbours are intrigued by this cultured German gentleman who works as a piano tuner; many are fellow emigres, who assume that he, like them, came to England to flee Hitler. That summer, Braun courts a woman, attends classical concerts, dances the twist.

But as the newspapers fill with reports of the hunt for Nazi war criminals, his nightmares become increasingly worse .