num_pages: 156
description: In a country gripped by war and overrun by the enemy, a sexual obsession tests the limits of one person's capacity for good or evil.In a small town in occupied France, a teacher of German is recruited by the Gestapo to translate sensitive documents. Every week, waiting for the next assignment, the teacher must sit for hours outside the commandant's office as prisoners are led past. Some are strangers; others are friends and neighbors known for a lifetime. It is often difficult to avoid eye contact, to keep from reacting, as men and women are taken to detention cells and then to the covered trucks that wait outside.One day, a strikingly handsome Jewish soldier is among the prisoners, and a spark is ignited. In an unprecedented act of boldness, the teacher saves the doomed man from the Gestapo and hides him in a secret room in the cellar. Here begins a shattering affair in which two bodies and two antagonistic languages, Yiddish and German, are magnetically attracted.In a tour de force of storytelling, Gilles Rozier identifies the narrator of this gripping novel neither by name nor gender. As the lovers become swept up in their passion, letting all thoughts of identity and transgression drop away, we are never quite sure how many layers of risk the teacher is taking on in harboring this precious fugitive.But is this a love that can withstand threats of wartime, or simply a transaction between a prisoner and his captor? Is the schoolteacher a hero or an opportunist? A collaborator or a resister? And finally: a man or a woman? Sparely told and achingly beautiful, The Mercy Room is an exquisite and subtle novel about the power of desire, the beauty of language, and the fine line between the best and worst of which we are capable.
language: English
title: The Mercy Room: A Novel
titlecomplete: The Mercy Room: A Novel
genres: Fiction, Historical, War, French Literature, Novels, Holocaust, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 125
publisher: Little, Brown and Company