The Light at Midnight

Read Time: 2 Minutes

The Light at Midnight by Tom Reppert is, in a word, superb. I’m not a student of history. It never was a strong suit of mine at school, and when given a chance, I dropped it in favour of a different class. That said, I’m not ignorant of the atrocities of the second world war, but even still I was unprepared what lay within this book.

This is a masterfully crafted story that explores life’s nuances under threat of Nazi extermination, yet doesn’t hold the punches when it comes to delivering the emotional body blows.

Rivka is an unrivalled heroine – surviving mass execution, starvation, being hunted down at every turn, the horrors of concentration camps, yet coming through it all. Her white-hot burning hatred fuelling her vengeance, keeping her alive one more day to exact retribution on those who killed her family. Her friends. Her people. Nemesis incarnate, with a singular mission.

Told from the perspectives of Rivka, and alternatively the Nazi SS officer Max Bauer who made it his personal mission not to disappoint the Führer. Bauer takes a sadistic, inhuman delight in his mission of killing every Jewish person he can find.

While it’s easy to disconnect from Bauer’s chapters, it’s not so easy with Rivka’s. Told through her eyes, voiced by Patricia Santomasso to come across to me half-whispered, half-conspiratorial, kept you right there with her, making the experience visceral. The delivery was perfect and fitted the story well.

Incredible, and kept me hooked to the very end. I hated every time I had to stop listening, I wanted to plough through the story in one sitting, but life isn’t like that. I needed to know revenge was delivered.

This is an emotionally charged work that you need to experience for yourself. Highly recommended.

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