The Requisitions: A Novel
“Samuél Lopez-Barrantes has provided us with a roadmap through some of the most dangerous and emotional moments of our time … This page-turning book is a must-read for all those who value the work of a master storyteller in command of his material.”
David A. Andelman, journalist & author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today
“… masterful prose and plotting, and a unique and imaginative approach to the subject, blending personal memoir, historical metafiction, and philosophical inquiry into the deepest recesses of the human soul...sobering, unsettling...but comes out—just barely—on the side of a case for hope."
Tim Ward, author of Mature Flâneur
September 1, 1939: Łódź, Poland is on the brink of invasion.
When the sirens begin, the professor is sitting at the Astoria Café.
The Astoria really did exist, but Professor Viktor Bauman is only a figment of a boy’s imagination.
In this work of historical metafiction, our present-day narrator recounts the story of Viktor Bauman, a disillusioned academic forced into the Łódź Ghetto, Elsa Dietrich, a captive Gestapo secretary, and Lieutenant Carl Becker, a troubled policeman whose fixation with Elsa is pushing him towards unspeakable cruelty.