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NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025・NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE
From the horrors of WWII to the spy games of the Cold War: a haunting tale of survival, vengeance, and the enduring shadows of history
“Stunning... Every line is a jewel.”—Lea Carpenter, New York Times
Shlomo Libowitz and Anton Epstein, two Jewish prisoners subjected to horrific experiments in a Nazi concentration camp, survive the unimaginable. Decades later, their lives converge again as they hunt Hans Lichtblau, the SS officer who tormented them, now operating in the shadowy world of Cold War geopolitics.
Their pursuit takes them from the ashes of Europe to the jungles of Central America, where justice and revenge blur against the backdrop of CIA conspiracies and a haunting past. But one life may be too short to settle all accounts, and Anton and Shlomo’s belated revenge is also a race against time...
With vivid characters and a masterful blend of fact and fiction, perfectly balanced between two continents and two eras, The Feeling of Iron confronts the moral ambiguities of vengeance and the inescapable echoes of history.
“Alonge is a screenwriter and an associate professor of film history at the University of Turin, and his style is as cinematic as the finest classic thrillers. As characters from the novel’s two timelines converge, every narrative puzzle piece laid down in the past locks in perfectly. In its scope and beauty, The Feeling of Iron also recalls great 19th-century novels like Tolstoy’s War and Peace, while its lyric, spare examination of a covert life is reminiscent of Joan Didion’s Democracy. Clarissa Botsford’s translation is precise and eloquent, never splashy. Every line is a jewel.”—Lea Carpener, The New York Times Book Review
“In The Feeling of Iron author Alonge explores the dark side of revenge as a tool of personal delusion and national self-destruction.”—Historical Novels Review