Mercy Room

"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." Gilles Rozier identifies the narrator of this 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.Rozier, Gilles is the author of 'Mercy Room ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780316159739 and ISBN 0316159735.