The Death's Head Chess Club (Atlantic, £12.99) is an intriguing novel by John Donoghue about an unlikely friendship that develops between three men. The two main protagonists are Emil Clement, a Jewish Holocaust survivor and Paul Meissner, a Nazi officer, with Wilhelm Schweninger, a Nazi propagandist, playing a supporting role.
When Meissner arrives in Auschwitz in 1944, fresh from fighting on the Russian front, and badly wounded, he is fit only for administrative duty. To boost officers' morale he starts a chess club but, when he learns that Jewish prisoner Clement is considered unbeatable, Meissner arranges for him to face the camp's best German players.
Clement plays chess with Nazi officers to save the lives of fellow inmates. After he defeats three officers, he is hounded by Schweninger, who is also a leading chess player.
Clement, a master watchmaker, is not merely a brilliant chess player, but his game is based on the rules of Kabbalah, giving the novel an air of mysticism.
He tells Schweninger: "I don't have to think about what moves I should make. I simply know". He believes he is "playing with the power of angels".
Without being an expert player, he has described chess contests convincingly
Fast-forward to 1962 and these three meet again at a chess tournament in Amsterdam. At first, Clement and Schweninger are horrified to have been thrown together again, and threaten to abandon the tournament. But, by this time, Meissner, having served time in prison for war crimes, has become a Catholic bishop, dying of leukaemia.
He tries to persuade Clement to exercise forgiveness and end his bitterness and renounce his belief that there are no good Germans.
Donoghue sets his novel in two time frames, and the narrative switches back and forth between 1944 and 1962.
This serves not only to lighten the horrors of Auschwitz, but also enables him to explore themes of redemption and forgiveness.
Donoghue, a mental health worker from Liverpool, has certainly done his research. Not only do the horrific scenes in Auschwitz ring true, but without being an expert chess player himself, he has managed to describe convincing contests. He recently told an interviewer: "every game that's in the book I've played with a chess-board to make sure it works."
His novel works well in general, too, despite its somewhat implausible dénouement. It is skilfully constructed, nicely paced and the characters are largely believable.