Errors and Horrors

David Bergen’s latest novel, Away from the Dead, begins with a small-scale personal story. In 1899, in the Ukrainian city of Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipro), twenty-two-year-old Julius Lehn, a bookish professor, meets eighteen-year-old Katka Martens, a bright, politically engaged student. He is an atheistic Jew; she grew up in a Mennonite colony. He is poor; her family is rich. These differences unite rather than divide them: “Their relationship was based on curiosity, and arguments about politics, and desire, and physical proximity.” They talk, they drink coffee, they flirt, they read Chekhov. Eventually they marry, first in a small private ceremony, then in a fancier service on the estate of Katka’s wealthy uncle, Heinrich Martens.

For three years, the couple live happily in a comfortable apartment provided by Uncle Heinrich: “Five rooms fully furnished, a view of the park below...