The Song Before It Is Sung : a novel - Justin Cartwright - ISBN: 9781596912687

In July 1944, a serious attempt was made on Adolf Hitler's life. That event acts as the basis for a fictionalized depiction of one man's participation in the conspiracy, Axel von Gottberg, a Prussian count. The group members who attempted to take the Fuhrer's life were tried and executed in a horrible fashion. Axel had been educated at Oxford in the 1930s and there became the close friend of Elya Mendel, an English Jew who eventually became a distinguished professor. However, a letter Axel writes drives a wedge between the two men and they do not see each other again after the war begins. In the present day, Mendel leaves his collection of letters from Axel to a student, Conrad Senior, whose charge is to organize the papers. Conrad then embarks on finding out what happened to Axel and to explain the rift between the two men.