For three decades, until the day he collapsed in the Brazilian surf in 1979, Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death who performed horrific experiments on the prisoners of Auschwitz, floated through South America in linen suits, keeping two steps ahead of Mossad agents, international police and the world's journalists. In this rigorusly researched factual novel-drawn almost entirely from historical documents-Olivier Guez traces Mengele's footsteps through these years of flight. This chilling novel situates the reader in a literary manhunt on the trail of one of the most elusive and evil figures of the twentieth century. "The book - almost all documented, bar some imagined dialogue and internal monologues - brings us as close to Mengele's mind as is feasible. It illuminates the nadir of the European century, and also what Guez calls the "Nazi society" of postwar Latin America. The book deserves to be read worldwide" - Simon Kuper, Financial Times
"Fully human, completely inhuman, this novelisation of Mengele allows the realisation of what seems to be the goal of the work of Olivier Guez across all fields: a confrontation with the concrete reality of absolute horror. History, through the novel, experiences itself, crystallizes in life; it radiates it with its black light, which one would like to keep away from oneself... A novel of shocking intensity" - Florent Georgesco, Le Monde
"A fantastic new novel" - Frederic Beigbader, Le Figaro
The Disappearance of Josef Mengele: A Novel