ANJA THE LIAR

Memory is the terrible burden shouldered by the protagonists of Moran's novel, survivors of WWII who became executioners in order to live. Polish-born Anja has left her former existence behind, fleeing Kraków, where she betrayed Resistance fighters to the Germans. In a displaced persons camp, she meets, across a barbed wire fence, former Wehrmacht officer Walter Fass, himself forever plagued with guilt for the massacre of partisan fighters in Yugoslavia. The two make the practical decision to marry—Walter offers Anja the shelter of his uncle's Tyrolean farm, and Anja helps one-armed Walter with the farmwork—and they gradually come to feel affection for each other. The birth of their daughter brings them closer together, but just as love and honesty come to seem possible, one of Walter's wartime comrades appears on their doorstep. Seductive, unscrupulous Mila is a Chetnik woman with a steely will and secret objectives, and she insinuates herself into both Walter and Anja's lives, poisoning their marriage. Moran has an impressive ability to create characters who are at once morally troubling and sympathetic. Anja, in particular, is a nuanced figure, pleading weakness but also acknowledging the pleasing sense of power her wartime actions gave her. The parallel account of another postwar marriage of convenience linking Anja's lesbian friend Sisi and Walter's homosexual friend Dizzi provides a piquant counterpoint to the main narrative. But truth and happiness are perpetually out of reach for both couples, and the novel's tragic conclusion forgoes even the comfort of confession. Moran (The Man in the Box, etc.) ties up his tale too quickly, but his examination of the fine distinctions between evil, weakness and desperation is stimulating and unflinching. (Oct.)