Mireille Juchau

I don't see him as a sort of symbol, although the book is heavily symbolic, obviously, through the things that we've been discussing.

I think that we get to see him in all his complexity.

He's a really flawed character and

We see him in relationship to his German friends and there's conflict between them.

We hear about his own complicated past.

His wife was an alcoholic who died.

He had an affair with a woman.

There was a Stasi file on him around this affair.

He's by no means a sort of cardboard cutout.

He's quite complex and I think that that is part of the skill of what she does is show us both his prejudices and his...

and his gentleness.

And it's not like he's radically changed from beginning to end, but I think that's her point, is that we can actually coexist and be generous and empathetic, and it doesn't necessarily turn us into a saint.

Well, just before we let our reviewers go, let's hear what Mireille Juchot and Brett Evans have been reading lately.

I've been reading a book by Svetlana Alekseyevich, which she was a Nobel Prize winning oral historian called The Unwomanly Face of War.

She does a series of interviews.

So in this case, she interviewed, I think it was 500 women over seven years about their experiences on the front lines, but also some of them were nurses, some of them were engine drivers, all doing various occupations during the war, but including fighting their extraordinary oral testimonies about things like

what it's like to wear a man's uniform when you're fighting and you're a young woman.

And there are time and time again stories about dealing with things like menstruation.

There were no sanitary supplies.

The uniforms were made for men.