The Zookeeper, Axel and his Australian wife Vera, work with allocated slave laborers to feed the surviving animals in the ruins of the Berlin Zoo. While Axel is fixated on his responsibilities to the animals, he neglects the safety of his wife and her friend Flavia, an anti-Nazi actress whose many lovers offer her protection in the increasingly battered city.
Conte provides well researched descriptions of the privations of citizens who are reduced to living in cellars and the ruins of their apartments, all the time scrounging for food. No-one can be trusted as many people report anti-Nazi sympathisers to the Gestapo. Both Axel and Flavia refuse to leave Berlin in time before Russian soldiers liberate the city, even though they have forged travel documents that would have permitted them to go.
A dramatic and violent ending brings the book to its close.
March: Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver.
Meg Dillon