 Rather than producing a researched-based fictionalized account, honouring history and abiding by the literary conventions, he has given himself entirely to the subject … a remarkable suppression of the authorial ego … Hackl does not impose a novelist’s order … and yet the tension of the story never fails, interest never wanes.This is because Hackl understands that any ambiguity about detail is in contrast to an unshakeable sense of inevitability, and his narrative exploits what every reader must know