by JOHN MUTTER
THE BOOK THIEF meets JOHN LE CARRÉ
How do you stay human inside a regime built to erase you?
Berlin, 1932. Germany’s fragile democracy is fracturing, its ideals cracking like thin glass as political violence and paranoia seep into the streets. In the midst of this tension, Rudi, a young Foreign Ministry official, meets Sara, an unpredictable, morally fierce Jewish woman whose connection with him is immediate and combustible.
By 1943, the Germany they knew has vanished, and Rudi works at the center of Nazi power, performing his duties by day and passing intelligence to the Allies by night—until Sara’s unexpected return threatens to unravel the life he has carefully constructed to survive.
FORTUNE AND GLASS is a philosophical spy novel and literary love story about private choices, secret resistance, and the cost of staying human inside a system determined to erase individuality. Lyrical, atmospheric, and morally complex, it explores the gray zones of living under authoritarianism and asks a timeless question: Who are you when everything falls apart?
FORTUNE AND GLASS is not a conventional WWII novel but a literary love story braided through a psychological spy narrative—an intimate exploration of identity, conscience, and quiet resistance inside a society sliding into extremism. Positioned at the crossroads of literary fiction, psychological suspense, and historical storytelling, the novel explores how ordinary people navigate love, loyalty, and moral responsibility inside systems that reward silence and punish dissent—questions that feel as urgent now as they did then. Lyrical, emotionally rich, and philosophically resonant, it turns away from spectacle and heroics to focus on the private cost of survival.
For readers who believe they’ve read every WWII novel, FORTUNE AND GLASS offers something rare: a deeply human story that restores the genre by shifting the lens inward, toward the moral choices that define us when history fractures beneath our feet. For readers of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, THE NIGHTINGALE, THE BOOK THIEF, THE ALICE NETWORK, and the espionage of John le Carré and FORTUNE AND GLASS blends intimacy, danger, and moral complexity into a WWII story that feels both timeless and urgent.
GENRES
- Fiction / Literary
- Fiction / Historical / WWII
- Fiction / Thrillers / Espionage
- Fiction / Psychological
THEMES
- Resistance without visibility
- Complicity vs. survival
- Love as refuge—and liability
- Identity, passing, and concealment
- The private life as a political space
- Power, fear, and self-censorship
- The fragility of normalcy
- Memory, guilt, and responsibility
- The cost of silence
- Fiction / Literary
- Fiction / Historical / WWII
- Fiction / Psychological
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