“Gabcik – that’s his name – really did exist. Lying alone on a little iron bed, did he hear, from outside, beyond the shutters of a darkened apartment, the unmistakeable creaking of the Prague tramways. I want to believe so.”

IS this fiction or historical fact, a point not lost on the author who is equally vexed by the problems of relating an historical narrative. What is truth down the years?

This is Prague 1942, drawn so brilliantly it almost breathes, it is a resistance story and also without judgment a portrait of one of the great, systematic killers of the 20th century, a key hole glimpse into the higher echelons of the Nazi party in its brutal pomp.

A word too for sam Taylor’s skillful translation from the French which does not let the original down.