The Inventory

The "deeply moving" novel of a small German community in WWII from one of contemporary literature's most important voices (Le Monde).

Combining the authenticity of reportage with emotional intensity and extraordinary imagination, The Inventory explores the effects of Nazi paranoia on every segment of German society. Gila Lustiger weaves together the tales of ordinary people swept up in a historic moment when oppression and extermination are everyday events.

Amid the routine of daily life—with its flirtations and quarrels, longings and disappointments—the mechanism of persecution spares no one. Intersecting stories reveal entwined relationships in a nation where no one is untouched by suspicion and fear; where housewives become informants and saviors; where even children become protectors and abusers.

A masterfully written narrative, The Inventory is the final, terrible account of how all—old and young, affluent and destitute, the pampered and neglected—were transformed by oppression and tyranny.

"Like Bernhard Schlink's The Reader, Gila Lustiger's The Inventory offers a tapestry of German society." —Le Monde

"A series of loosely interlocking narrative snapshots of a small community of characters in Germany. The fates of Polish nationalists, German homosexuals, criminals and the disabled are portrayed alongside those of Jews and Nazis." —Publishers Weekly

"[O]ne of the most powerful testimonies we have to the gathering storm that annihilated a whole population." —The New York Times

"A book of extraordinary suggestive power." —Berliner Zeitung