Traitor

Deception and survival in World War II's eastern European theater

War is never as simple as ‘good versus evil’ or even ‘might makes right’, and World War II as it played out across Poland and Ukraine was particularly messy. Not only were the forces of Germany and the Soviet Union using the area as a massive battlefield in their contest for eastern European domination, the Polish and Ukrainian people were simultaneously at war among themselves over disputes dating back hundreds of years. The situation was chaotic. Ukrainian Nationalists fought Poles and Soviets; Poles battled Germans and Ukrainians allied with Germans; and Soviet soldiers lived in constant fear of the communist party’s dreaded secret police, the NKVD. In this environment, nothing was certain except that somebody, somewhere, wanted to kill you. Maybe even your best friend. This meticulously detailed story uses alternating narrative to follow two young soldiers, each trying to survive the almost unimaginable brutalities of wartime, which are shown here in such a micro level that you can almost smell the stench of festering bullet wounds. A complex but well-researched novel for advanced readers ready to experience something of the fog of war.