Traitor [Hardcover]

Gudrun Pausewang (Author), Rachel Ward (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2006

An enemy is hiding in Anna's barn?a Russian prisoner of war on the run from the Nazis. Only Anna knows he's there. If she turns him in, he'll be shot.Anna can't bring herself to cause another person's death?especially when she's questioning her own feelings about the Nazi regime. But if she hides him, she'll be a traitor to Germany, and for that, she could be shot.Anna must evade discovery, knowing that even her own brother will turn her in if he finds out her secret. Can she save the soldier?and herself?

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7-10–Pausewang presents an exciting and thought-provoking novel from the perspective of a teen who secretly questions the validity of Nazi ideals. In the last year of World War II, 16-year-old Anna discovers an escaped Russian POW in her village barn and makes a conscious choice to provide shelter, food, and safety, risking certain death if discovered. With her older brother, Seff, at the front and her younger brother, Felix, completely indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth Movement, Anna represents a voice of reason and humanity as she struggles to make sense of her country's political aspirations. Like Markus Zusak's The Book Thief (Knopf, 2006), this novel portrays good, caring German citizens caught in the cruel domination of a mad dictator. Readers are left with a brutal and hopelessly realistic conclusion that will provide much opportunity for discussion. This is a powerful view of resistance and fortitude when ordinary citizens have little control over their lives other than their own private thoughts and beliefs.–Rita Soltan, Youth Services Consultant, West Bloomfield, MI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

When Anna finds a fugitive Russian soldier in the barn of her village home in Stiegnitz, Germany, at the end of 1944, she hides him in a bunker in the countryside, though she could be shot for sheltering the enemy. Told from Anna's viewpoint, the story, translated from the German, is a tense survival drama. It is also a close-up of Germans in all their diversity as the war is ending and the Allies advance. There are differences even within Anna's own family: some long for peace and refuse to support the Nazis; Anna's older brother is a soldier at the front; her younger brother, and her greatest danger, is a fanatical member of the Hitler Youth, who would not hesitate to betray her if he knew her secret. There's too much detail about the months Anna hides the soldier, but Pausewang, whose World War II books include The Final Journey (1996) and The Dark Hours (2006), clearly portrays the lives of ordinary people on the home front. The shocking, unforgettable climax shows the truth of war. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: Carolrhoda Books; Tra edition (November 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822561956
• ISBN-13: 978-0822561958
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,014,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll feel every pulse beat, every bit of fear, every sigh of relief., August 5, 2010

By 

Donna at Bites (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Traitor (Paperback)

This isn't my first time reading a translated book. I've read both good and bad and usually, regardless of what it is, something's missing. It's the natural act of translating. Only the original language can hold the beauty the story was meant to portray. The thing is, with Traitor, hardly anything's lost. Yeah, there's some off punctuation, no doubt carried over from the original German. But the beauty? The emotion? The gut-wrenching feeling that kept me turning the pages? Oh yeah. All there. Didn't miss a beat. Reading this book makes me wish I knew German so I can read it in its original language. It can only be better in German.

Initially I got the feeling from reading that Anna was this little girl. And I guess in her head she was. Very naive, very close-minded about everything that was going on. She was literally smack dab in the middle of a war and all she cared about was socializing and where the greatest places to hang out were.

Maxim changed everything and throughout the course of the story, you see Anna harden. When the fear sets in, the fear that she could be shot for hiding this Russian POW, the fear that her brother really was capable of turning her in for the good of the Fatherland, her skin thickens. She no longer acts or talks like a little girl. Her mannerisms, her actions, are all adult. A guilty adult trying to hide as much as possible. At first her actions to help his man were purely innocent. She didn't know he was Russian. She thought he was mentally challenged and felt bad for him. But the she finds out and despite everything she was taught about Russians in the Hitlerjugen, their brutish, animalistic nature, she doesn't see that in Maxim. She sees a man like everyone else and she can't let him die.

Felix literally had me crying. He was younger than Anna by a couple of years (14, maybe) and he was wholly indoctrinated into the Third Reich to the point that he'd turn over his own family because nothing came before the good of Germany. Not even his life. By the end I wanted to scream for his fate, and the fate of the rest of his family because of him. The Reich got them when they were young and impressionable. They were more easily swayed. And Felix got sucked right into it.

Every loss portrayed in Traitor, every flinch of fear, every pang of sorrow, or hunger, every rumble of a bomb, you could hear and feel through Gudrun's writing. It's a different view of yet another World War II novel. The ending isn't happy. In fact it's a blackout that has you wondering what happened next but at the same time you know exactly what happened. Everything is true. Everything is true. And it had me wanting to screaming, "Noooooooooooooo!" It says something when you spend a few seconds flipping the last page back and forth, willing some more words to appear to give a more well-rounded ending to the story but there were none. Really, I liked where it ended for all the frustration it caused. I think it's perfect. Sad and heart-crushing and gut-churning but it's where the story needed to end. I can't picture it ending anywhere else.

If you read Traitor, and you should, it'll suck you right in. You'll feel everything Anna feels. You'll be able to hear everything, taste everything, shudder with her every shudder, flush with her every stroke of panic when she thinks she's been found out. You won't want it to end and you'll scream when it does because you won't be ready for it. It's just done, just like Anna. And then you'll want to go back to the beginning and start again just to feel everything she did all over again.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book, fast paced., March 21, 2007

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Traitor (Hardcover)

This book would be excellent for the reader that enjoys a fast-paced plot. This story takes place in the Czech Republic during World War II. The main character gets into something that, if she is found out, she could be killed, but she somehow always finds a way to escape trouble. Since this book was translated, though, it can be hard to understand at times.