It is 1941, and Antwerp is in the grip of Nazi occupation. Young policeman Wilfried Wils has no intention of being a hero - but war has a way of catching up with people. When his idealistic best friend draws him into the growing resistance movement, and an SS commander tries to force him into collaborating, Wilfried's loyalties become horribly, fatally torn. As the beatings, destruction and round-ups intensify across the city, he is forced into an act that will have consequences he could never have imagined. A searing portrayal of a man trying to survive amid the treachery, compromises and moral darkness of occupation, Will asks what any of us would risk to fight evil.
Jeroen Olyslaegers (b. 1967) is a Flemish author and playwright. Will won four major prizes in the Netherlands and Flanders and is being translated into eight languages. He lives in Antwerp, on the Kruikstraat, where police helped the Nazis round up Jews during the Second World War.
Title: Will
Author: Jeroen Olyslaegers
ISBN: 9781782274254
Binding:
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publication Date: 2020-09-03
Number of Pages: 352
Weight: 0.2901 kg
A brilliant, uncomfortable exploration of the moral compromises necessary to live alongside evil -- The Times, Historical Fiction Book of the Year
Constantly grapples with what the ordinary man might do when faced with a horror so huge that to resist might threaten his very survival. Olyslaegers bravely explores moral compromise, betrayal and collaboration - and throws our polarised times into sharp relief. -- The Observer
A vital and endlessly frightening question: under the cosh of an occupier, who among us would actually risk our lives or livelihoods for the sake of principle, or a fellow citizen? -- The Guardian
I loved this book. Will is a vivid, complex, and captivating novel about the grubby moral compromises of life under occupation -- Bart van Es, author of The Cut Out Girl
A masterful book, a gripping epic, necessary and gorgeously written. -- Stefan Hertmans, author of War and Turpentine
