Russia, October 26, 1941. Martin Bora remains a Wehrmacht officer and is increasingly torn between obedience to his uniform and aversion to the horrors of Nazism. He has a broken arm, miraculously surviving capture and a daring escape behind the lines. Although wounded and exhausted, in the dead of night Bora receives an unexpected assignment from his superiors: to shed light on the death of Major Alt, "fallen in battle," at least according to the official conclusions. The investigation, however, quickly turns into a pilgrimage through the atrocious Nazi massacres committed on the Eastern Front. Wandering through the streets of Odessa, where the SS have just carried out terrible reprisals against the largely Jewish population, the melancholic Martin Bora begins to suspect that Major Alt was not simply killed in battle, that perhaps there is something more. Bora thus finds himself following the dual thread of research into Alt's strange death and the massacres perpetrated by the Romanian army supported by the SS. A thread that runs dangerously, too dangerously, on the edge of the precipice.
Between lost loves and illegal trafficking, wild nights and bloody pogroms, in the thirteenth installment of Martin Bora's saga, The Pilgrim's Mirror (Sellerio, 2026, €17.00, 510 pages. Also available as an eBook. Translated by Luigi Sanvito), Ben Pastor takes us to the Eastern Front and the iconic, mysterious, and fascinating city of Odessa. Here, the Wehrmacht officer will once again have to put his investigative skills to the test. Yet solving the murder case will not allow him to resolve the drama of his tormented conscience: that of being a good man in the wrong uniform.
But first of all, we asked Ben Pastor what it was like to meet Martin Bora again a few years after the last novel about him:
"It was like reconnecting with someone I'd known for a long time: not a character to reinvent, but someone with whom I could reconnect. Bora continues to amaze me because he maintains a strong internal coherence, but each new story forces him to confront different aspects of himself."
At what stage of his life as a man and soldier is Bora in this novel?
"He's now an experienced man, marked by events and less prone to illusions. He's learned that war offers no simple answers and that duty often conflicts with conscience. This uninterrupted tension is precisely the driving force behind his character and his investigations."
Why the city of Odessa as the setting for the novel?
"Because Odessa is a border town, where cultures, languages, and destinies have intertwined for centuries. During the Second World War, it was the scene of dramatic events little known to the general public. I was interested in portraying a complex reality, rich in fascination but also profoundly contradictory."
When you began writing novels featuring Bora as the main character, more than 25 years ago, war seemed almost anachronistic for us Europeans. That's not the case today. Did this influence your approach to telling a story set during the Second World War?
Yes, inevitably. It's not the historical perspective that has changed, but the reader's. Today we know that war isn't a thing of the past, and this makes themes like fear, moral choices, violence against civilians, and the fragility of peace more immediate. However, I've tried to avoid any forced modernization: my job remains to rigorously recount the past, leaving it up to the readers to discern its resonances with the present.
What now? Is something different, or is Bora about to get back on track?
For me, writing is always a jumble of projects. There are ideas that aren't about Bora and that deserve attention, but I have to admit that Martin is a character who never stops staying with me. In fact, I'm already working on my next novel, which will be a direct sequel to The Pilgrim's Mirror. After that, there will be at least one set in Leipzig in April 1945.