Diary of a Dead Man on Leave

Name: Diary of a Dead Man on Leave
Rating: 4.29 (3305 reviews)

by David Downing

Amazon

4.3(3,305)

Germany, 1938. A man calling himself Josef Hofmann rents a room from a widow in Hamm, presenting himself as a returned emigrant from Argentina. In reality he is a communist agent sent by Moscow to re-establish contact with members of the German Communist Party who survived Nazi repression.

Hofmann records the mission in a secret diary later discovered by the widow’s son, Walter, who was eleven when the stranger entered their household. As Hofmann cautiously approaches former comrades, his attachment to Walter and his mother complicates a task he had expected to end in imprisonment or death. The diary follows one man’s effort to resist Nazism while his confidence in both Moscow and revolutionary sacrifice begins to change.