It is a grotesque novel about the Holocaust during the time of Nazism in Germany.

The work uses the perpetrator's perspective telling the biography of the SS mass murderer Max Schulz, who after World War II assumes a Jewish identity and finally emigrates to Israel in order to escape prosecution in Germany.

Hilsenrath wrote the novel in German, but because of choosing the perpetrator's perspective he initially had difficulties publishing it in Germany.

The book was first published in the U.S. in an English translation by Andrew White in 1971 by Doubleday, one of the largest book publishing companies in the world, and in Germany only in 1977.

This article about a novel on The Holocaust first published in the 1970s is a stub.