Hitler's Tasters

An international bestseller by Italian writer Rosella Postorino, laureate of the most prestigious literary awards in Italy: Strega, Campiello and Un autore l’Europa. The novel is based on a true story — an interview given in 2012 by 95-year-old Margot Wölk, the only survivor of the war out of fifteen girls who sampled food intended for the Führer at Hitler's headquarters, Wolf's Lair (“Wolf's lair”): he was pathologically afraid of being poisoned. For Berlin native Rosa Sauer (the name given to Margot Wölk in the novel), who found herself in East Prussia by chance, this service provided an opportunity to eat well for the first time in years of war, but the price of each meal could be death. Similar to Bernard Schlink's “The Reader,” “Hitler's Tasters” is not so much about the horrors of war, but about fear and choice. About whether one can remain above the fray while serving the embodiment of world evil. What one might and might not do to maintain hope for a future life, for the return of a husband from the front?..