In this tense thriller from the screenwriter Emeric Pressburger – he of the legendary British film-making duo Powell and Pressburger (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus) – a fugitive Nazi moves into a boarding house over a stationery shop in London’s Pimlico. We learn that Karl Braun, who arrives “hatless, with a bow tie, greying hair, slight in build”, is in fact one Dr Otto Reitmüller, a former surgeon who has been in hiding from authorities for 20 years and who is wanted for conducting medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. A gifted violinist, Braun now works as a piano tuner and spends his evenings at the opera or attending classical concerts with his beau, the newly divorced Mrs Taylor. But beneath the cultured exterior is a man who frets about who might be following him and is plagued by dreams of being arrested and put on trial.
The narrator is actor Mark Gatiss, who performs Braun as a softly spoken introvert, a contrast to his louder, jollier neighbours, Strohmayer and Kolm, both German émigrés who fled the Nazis, with whom he strikes up uneasy friendships. Braun shows little remorse for the suffering he inflicted, though he is not without emotions, as evidenced by his sadness over the deaths of his wife and child in the allied bombing of Hamburg. First published in 1966, The Glass Pearls doesn’t go so far as to root for Braun, though it nonetheless puts us in the unusual position of looking at the world through the eyes of a quietly charismatic war criminal.
Further listening
A Visible Man
Edward Enninful, Audible Studios, 7hr 43min
The editor-in-chief of British Vogue reads his memoir documenting his path from 1980s Ghana, to couch-surfing in London to landing one of the top jobs in fashion publishing.
The Story of Art Without Men
Katy Hessel, Penguin Audio, 10hr 44min
This canon-busting celebration of female creativity is read by the author.
