In The Labyrinth

by John David Morley

For German businessman Joseph Pallehner, World War II meant little more than an increase in profits. Among his clients and tea guests he counted both Czech nationalists and Nazi sympathizers. He saved the lives of two Jewish girls and he supplied iron to build transport tracks to concentration camps.

After the war is over, one morning during breakfast, a soldier with a warrant for Pallehner's arrest shatters forever the serenity of his quiet life in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Pallehner is taken to Dachau, where occupation army officials assure him that the arrest was certainly a bureaucratic error.

But days later, he is loaded onto a truck as a last-minute replacement to fill up a shipment of captives headed for the infamous Leopoldov Prison in eastern Czechoslovakia.

His crime: pro-Reich activity; his sentence: six years.

Genres: Fiction

214 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like a Fallada homage.

[Mike Marsbergen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it back in my final year of high school. Bloody brilliant stuff. It's stayed with me all this time, but I could never remember the name! Only recently rediscovered it, and can't wait to reread it. Highly recommended.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Czechoslovakia, wrongful imprisonment, political prisoners, post-World War II