The undertaking

An immensely powerful first novel set in Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II, its ambition and achievement reminiscent of Rachel Seiffert's 'The Dark Room', Hans Fallada's 'Alone in Berlin', and Helen Dunmore's 'The Siege'. Desperate to escape the Eastern front, Peter Faber, an ordinary German soldier, marries Katharina Spinell, a woman he has never met; it is a marriage of convenienc...