The Undertaking

"My hand…. May I have it back?" In wartime Berlin, Katharina Spinell has just shaken hands with her new husband, Peter Faber. Their marriage of convenience (they've never met before) was arranged so that he could have a respite from the Soviet front and for her to get a widow's pension if he dies in war. Fortuitously, each finds the other attractive, and within nine months the new bride gives birth to a son. Their "undertaking" is that he will return to her and she will wait for him. The novel oscillates between Peter's travails during the Wehrmacht's march to Stalingrad and Katharina and her parents casting their lot with high-ranking Nazi Party officials. Irish journalist Magee's first novel depicts with uncanny perception the rigors of war contrasted with life on the home front. Her compelling but realistic love story presents characters for whom most readers will feel little sympathy because of their unquestioning belief in the German cause, yet the story is all the more fascinating as related entirely from the Nazi viewpoint.