The Inventory

A series of loosely interlocking narrative snapshots tells the story of a small community of characters in Germany before, during and after WWII, where hero and villain alike fear and doubt what they do, and decisions made long before the war suddenly take on new significance. Ignoring his family's wishes, a Jewish man abandons his dentistry studies and opens a bookshop. When it is Aryanized and he is taken away to a camp, dentistry saves his life but crushes his soulDhe spends the war extracting the gold teeth of gassed prisoners. A German Christian who marries a wealthy Jewess for her money eventually converts to Judaism for her love, only to find his act of faith has placed his family in jeopardy. The fates of Polish nationalists, German homosexuals, criminals and the disabled are portrayed alongside those of Jews and Nazis. Wisely avoiding melodrama through the sheer cumulative weight of information, the novel is composed in studiously dispassionate prose, the characters little more than sketches. Part of a second generation of Holocaust writers, Lustiger is the daughter of a camp survivor who told her as a child that the numbers tattooed on his arm were his telephone number. (Jan.)