I didn't learn in school that "homosexuals" were a group targeted by the Nazis. I distinctly remember first hearing about it in the late 80s from the silence = death campaign created during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. When I came across Justine Saracen's new novel, Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright, I was intrigued by its focus on gay and lesbian Germans trying to negotiate the Nazi regime and WWII.

The novel covers twelve years (from September 8, 1935 to April 18, 1945) in the lives of several characters and explores what each does or doesn't do to resist the barbarity of Nazism and cope with the horrors of war. There were some surprises within the story that I didn't see coming and the novel kept up at a good pace.

The opening scene is right out of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935). It literally is. The novel opens on September 8, 1934 with Katja Sommer, the main protagonist, wrapping up the filming of Riefenstahl's masterpiece in Nuremberg. Katja is a young women hoping to build a career in film making, but the job with Riefenstahl was only temporary. Katja is engaged to Dietrich, but is in no hurry to marry her kind, but dull fiancé who is already succumbing to the Nazi's propaganda such as the proper role for women within the Reich (make babies, keep house).

Everyone is full of hope and excitement over the creation of this film, but already there are rumblings of trouble. Riefenstahl insists that the movie she's creating is not propaganda for the Nazi Party. She may declare that "Art is not political," but readers know what is about to unfold.

While Dietrich is off serving in the army, Katja scores a full-time job working for Riefenstahl. She befriends two men, Rudi and Peter, who, she comes to realize, are lovers. Then there's her odd attraction to Frederica Brandt who used to work for Riefenstahl, but now works for Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda. Katja is doing her best to go along with the flow, but when a friend is arrested under Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code (prohibiting male homosexuality) her perspective on what makes one a "Good German" shifts.

The plot really takes off from there and I won't go into more detail because to do so would spoil the reading.

The only stumbling point I had with the novel is that Saracen takes her scenes of the fall of Berlin from the movie Downfall (Der Untergang, 2004) to a degree that made me uncomfortable. It made sense to replicate part of Triumph of the Will in the opening of the novel because the creation of that film is part of the actual story Saracen creates. In a postscript she acknowledges "drawing from" Der Untergang, which I was relieved to see, but it still doesn't sit well with me.

But don't let that keep you from reading Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright. It's a historical novel that is both gripping and heartfelt. I hope it finds a wide audience. ( )

Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright starts in 1934, when the Nazis are solidifying their power over German. A group of thirteen Germans are working on a (real) propaganda film, Trimph des Willens. The coming years will change them all, even as their lives continue to intersect. Although there are thirteen of them (including at least one "real" person, Leni Riefenstahl), there are four "main" characters.

There is Frederica, a half-German, half-British woman who gains access to the inner ranks of the Nazi elite as Goebbels' secretary. But things are not as they seem; she's working for the SOE, a British intelligence agency.

Katja, the daughter of a violinist, is a dutiful German who is puzzled by the fact that she feels little to no attraction to her fiance, Dietrich, a Wehrmacht soldier. When Frederica kisses her, she finally feels attraction - and responds by rushing into a marriage with Dietrich. But her path crosses with Frederica again, and the sparks between them can't be ignored.

Then there is Rudi, a photographer who is in violation of Paragraph 175. Sent to a concentration camp, he joins a penal regiment in an effort to save his life. But he's turned into a killer.

Finally, there is Peter, Rudi's partner. He's half-Jewish, and he spends most of the war as a zookeeper and doing what little he can to harm to Reich.

There are a host of other, secondary, characters along the way, and the author seamlessly blends in "real" people, from the upper echelon of the Nazi Party (Goebbels, his wife, Hitler, Eva Braun), as well as Tradl Junge, British undercover agents, and a Russian photographer.

At first, I didn't really like the author's narrative voice; there was just something that didn't click with me. But as I continued the book, I apparently adapted to it, and I was drawn into the world. The book is literally crammed with historical facts, and as a history nerd, this greatly appealed to me (as well as spotting the names of "real" people that I recognized from other biographies/memoirs/books/etc).

I also enjoyed Frederica and Katja's relationship. It evolved slowly and never felt rushed, unlike in many lesbian books.

The book could have been better edited (there were numerous missing quotation marks throughout the book), but as Bold Stroke Books is a smaller publishing house, I'm willing to overlook that, especially since the book was so good.

The only real complaint I have is that there were just too many coincidental meetings and the like. Characters who knew each other from years past kept running into one another at a rate that boggles the mind. In a country the size of Germany, especially one that is torn apart and ravaged by war, it was just unbelievable.

Still, this book is a highly recommended read. ( )