Falls the Shadow

Plot

Falls the Shadow, Litvinoff’s 1983 novel, returns to the theme of the Holocaust and survival with an intriguingly twisted tale. It seems that a murdered man shot by a camp survivor in Tel Aviv might have been a Nazi SS officer who had escaped Europe and taken on the identity of a Jewish victim. It appears that he lived as a Jew, a believing Jew, for nearly 40 years in suburban Tel Aviv, raised a family and was buried as a Jew in a Jewish cemetery. The author asks us to consider whether this life could constitute an adequate penance.