"After having booked somebody in, I sleep all morning as the prisoner has to be processed anyway," notes Gestapo Officer Wolf Manhardt on August 19, 1944 in his diary. At 4.00am the suspect Lilly Winter was taken into custody and transported to the Hotel Metropol, the Gestapo's Viennese headquarters since 1938 and the most efficient of the Third Reich – 500 rooms, 700 offices, and Wolf Manhardt, the best, a master of interrogation, not a thug but an expert in psychological torture. For him interrogation is an art form, and relying on his expertise he wants the prisoner all to himself. What starts as a simple routine soon turns into an obsession, a mass of hatred, pity, jealousy, desire and love.

About the author:

Fritz Lehner was born in 1948 in the Austrian province of Upper Austria. He is a graduate of the Vienna Film and Television Academy and is a script-writer and director. He is a member of the German Academy for the Performing Arts and of the Berlin College of Art. Some of Lehner's films include:"Schöne Tag" (Beautiful Day), script and direction;"Mit meinen heißen Tränen" (With My Burning Tears), script and direction;"Jedermanns Fest" (Jedermann's Feast), script and direction. He received the Austrian"Österreichischen Volksbildungspreis" award in 1979 and 1986; the"Prix Italia" in 1982 and 1983; the"Adolf-Grimme-Preis in Gold" award in 1982 and 1986; the"Landeskulturpreis Oberösterreich für Literatur" award in 1992 and the"Großen Diagonale-Preis" award in 2002. His debut novel"?" was published by Seifert Verlag in 2003.