Restless Night | Review

He was an unloved child, then a teenage outcast, and now a young man whose enthusiasm has been broken — yet who, remarkably, still clings to life. In Ukraine in 1942, as the Second World War rages, a German military chaplain is sent to minister to a deserter condemned to death. While waiting for the execution, the Protestant pastor immerses himself in the story of the young prisoner he is about to meet. The result is — among other things — a novel about the meaning of accompaniment and prayer. About life and death, hope and resignation; about the difficult yet luminous art of becoming a neighbor. Whoever that neighbor may be: a migrant, someone living in poverty, a person with a disability — in every case, and in different ways, someone perceived as «the enemy.» The wartime night is dark, yet in that room, life triumphs — still.