The novel begins with 13-year-old Michael O’Shaunessey, son of the Irish ambassador to Germany, having “dinner with Nazis” (2). It’s 1943, and Michael and his parents, who are also at the dinner, have been stationed in Germany for six years. Michael wears a Hitler Youth uniform, including a red armband with a black swastika, because he is “a Nazi too” (1)—“or at least [he is] pretending to be” (2). Michael explains that with his immaculate German accent and brown hair and eyes, he can “pass” (2) as a German boy, something he must do to avoid being sent to a concentration camp.

When the dinner guests mention a boy who turned his own parents in for hiding a Jew, Michael becomes upset and can’t maintain his composure. He knocks over and breaks a glass, and the sight of the shards takes him back to a night several years earlier, when he discovered “what monsters the Nazis really were” (4).

Michael recounts a night in November 1938, when he and his parents are walking home after seeing a movie. They see a fire and run to help, but before they can, men in Nazi armbands rush through the neighborhood carrying weapons, smashing store windows and painting JUDE—“Jew”—on buildings.