Episode 4

The Prisoner by Sally Carson is the 1936 sequel to her novel Crooked Cross, first published in 1934 and based on her first-hand experience of travelling through Bavaria witnessing the inexorable and devastating rise of fascism. The Prisoner was written by Carson whilst she was on holiday in Germany in 1935. Carson was only 38 when she died in 1941 of breast cancer, so she never lived to see the end of the war - which makes her novels and her foresight even more extraordinary.

Despite the excellent reviews for both books, both she and the texts disappeared. Long out of print, they were recently rediscovered by Persephone Books and republished.

The Prisoner picks up the story of the Kluger family a few months after the death of Lexa Kluger and her boyfriend Moritz Wiseman who were hounded and hunted down on the mountains between their home town of Kranach and Austria. The reason – relationships between Germans and Jews were now forbidden. Despite his family being long assimilated and his father having won an Iron Cross in the First World War fighting for his country, Germany, Moritz, while technically not Jewish because his mother wasn’t, had a Jewish surname.

The Prisoner follows the Klugers as they try to make sense of Lexa’s death, each in their own way. And in particular Helmy, Lexa’s brother, who was on patrol on the mountain that night. The trauma of what he witnessed has affected his behaviour so much that his family now fear for his safety as the Nazi Party tightens its grip on German society.

Reader: Daniel Weyman
Abridged by Sara Davis
Produced by Caroline Raphael
Production Co-ordinator: Dawn Williams
Recorded and mixed by Matt Bainbridge

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4