Spark of Life

Prisoner 509 has survived ten years in a German concentration camp and senses, from distant fighting and the behaviour of the guards, that the Nazi regime may be nearing defeat. Starvation and violence have reduced the prisoners physically, but the possibility of liberation gives them a reason to organise, resist and preserve one another.

The novel moves between the camp barracks and the SS administration, showing how terror depends on routine, hierarchy and the destruction of individual identity. Its focus is not military victory but the recovery of agency among political prisoners and other captives during the final phase of the Second World War.