The tattooist of Auschwitz A novel

LISTENING TO this novel on my iPhone during the past week - while clutching a subway strap, trotting on a treadmill, filling my basket at Trader Joe's, biking down Amsterdam Avenue, walking my dog around the Harlem Meer - I began to notice how many other people in the city wear headphones as they go about their daily lives. Having recently moved back into New York City from the suburbs, where I mostly listened to audiobooks in my car, I was struck by how different it is listening to a book on headphones while doing other things. On the one hand it's a peculiarly intimate experience; the narrator speaks directly into your ear, as if to you alone. On the other hand, it can be hard to concentrate on the story, particularly if it's nonlinear or experimental. "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" is neither of these. If I hadn't read that Heather Morris originally wrote this novel as a screenplay, I might've guessed: The story clips along without extraneous exposition, and the dialogue is snappy and convincing. As a reader, I'm usually drawn to dense wordplay and complicated perspectives. But as a multitasking listener, I found the straightforward, chronological narrative easy and pleasurable to follow. Based on the author's interviews with a Jewish Holocaust survivor, "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" is the story of Lale Sokolov, Prisoner 32407, who was transported from Slovakia to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Birkenau, Poland, in 1942 and assigned the task of tattooing numbers on his fellow prisoners' arms. As a Tätowierer, Lale was in a privileged but morally compromised position, "performing an act of defilement on people of his own faith," as the narrator notes. Unlike most prisoners, Lale had agency. He was given his own room, fed extra rations and allowed freedoms most prisoners were denied, like traversing the camp alone and visiting both male and female barracks. In Morris's telling, Lale is shrewd, charming and self-aware. The moment he enters the gates, he vows he will leave the camp alive; he notes the Nazis' habits and routines, looking for any signs of weakness. He speaks seven languages: French, Russian, German, Slovak, Yiddish, Hungarian and Polish. This ability is his superpower. Toggling among languages, he serves as a guide, spy and interpreter. He knows what the guards are saying when they don't realize he's listening; he speaks Yiddish when he doesn't want them to understand. He mediates disputes and serves as a translator. Eventually he takes risks to save the lives of other prisoners. The audio version of this book is a particularly strong marriage of narrator and material. The British actor Richard Armitage uses an impressive variety of actorly tools as he shifts perspective from Lale to Gita, the Slovakian prisoner Lale falls in love with; Baretski, Lale's commander; a few other prisoners; and some SS officers, including real-life figures like Rudolf Hess and the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Armitage wrings every ounce of feeling, drama and even humor - mostly at the expense of the dimwitted Baretski - from this earnest story. He skillfully conveys the cruel, mocking tone that the SS officers and guards often used with prisoners as a way of reinforcing their power. Even when he isn't portraying a specific character, Armitage keeps the listener engaged and alert by modulating his tone, sometimes within individual sentences. At times it seems as if there are two narrators, so often, and ably, does Armitage vary his delivery. The relationship between Lale and Gita, with its progression from love at first sight to giddy infatuation to deep commitment, sometimes strains credulity. It's hard to imagine that malnourished prisoners with lesions and shaved heads might have had the autonomy, impulse and ability to carry on a torrid love affair. Apparently, they did - in real life, Lale and Gita ended up together. But the language of romance can seem jarringly out of place when contrasted with the starvation, mutilation and murder of thousands around them. The author heads off this criticism by having the characters raise this question themselves. "Is it wrong of me to want to escape reality for a bit?" Gita asks her friends. No, it isn't. And to be fair, Morris works hard to convey the devastating reality of daily life in a concentration camp. Her compassion for her characters, combined with Armitage's riveting delivery, makes this an immensely satisfying book to listen to, whatever else you might happen to be doing. CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE is the author, most recently, of the novel "A Piece of the World."