In World War II, young Meissner, a college student with dreams of becoming a scientist, is drafted into the German army and sent to the Eastern Front. Many decades later, now an old man reckoning with his past, Meissner pens a letter to his grandson explaining his actions. Found among his effects after his death, the letter is at once a thrilling story of adventure and a rumination on the moral ambiguity of war. In Alexander Starritt's novel, Meissner recounts a life lived in atonement, and lays bare his rationale, exults in the courage of others, and blurs the boundaries of right and wrong.

"A remarkable and audacious novel that is harrowingly real and, at the same time, asks the most searching questions about men at war."—William Boyd