A masterfully unconventional novel about Speers two lives: as Hitlers personal architect, ally and confidant; and as the worlds idealised specimen of a good Nazi... It reads as the character study of a man who manipulated one of the most powerful men on Earth -- Vincenzo Latronico * Guardian * Portraying Speer's trajectory from urban planner to minister for armaments (and, eventually, jail after the Nuremberg trials), it unfolds as a chillingly ordinary workplace drama... Orengo's highly effective storytelling technique mixes an elegant filleting of secondary sources with crisp reflections of truth and falsehood * Daily Mail * An intriguing factual novel... thought-provoking. It makes you think hard about culpability, about the struggle to keep your sense of right and wrong in a totalitarian system -- Robbie Millen * Sunday Times * Superb... a work of metahistory... Like a mystery, it is concerned with guilt and accountability... The reader of this lucid, elegant novel is left to reflect on the many ways in which, in the wrong hands, art and memory can conspire to obscure as well as to illuminate -- Barry Langford * The Conversation * In telling Speer's story, Orengo largely forsakes traditional fiction techniques... this allies the book with other self-consciously historical novels, or novelistic histories, including Laurent Binet's HHhH, Eric Vuillard's The Order of the Day and Benjamin Labatut's The Maniac -- Chris Power * Observer * A stark exploration of Albert Speer surgical, almost forensic in its historical investigation * Irish Times * A wonderfully intelligent and radical portrait of Albert Speer. Fascinating, a triumph -- William Boyd
