Eating with the devil
Author: Dimitrij Grčar
Published by: Novum Publishing GmbH (2019)
A Leica locked away.
A past no one prosecutes.
And a woman who knows when to stay silent.
Eating with the Devil follows Greta Anckermann into the next chapter of her life — post-war Vienna, Geneva, and beyond. The war is over, but its shadows are long, and Greta has learned that truth, when exposed, can be fatal. A younger journalist, Patrizia, tries to document Greta’s story in 1968, but unravels far more than intended.
Through fragmented testimony, Greta reveals what she saw — and what she did — during the most ambiguous years of the war: the slow moral collapse of Europe, the compromises made for survival, and the roles women played in both resistance and betrayal. This is a novel about complicity, silence, and the long memory of those who witnessed horror and kept on living.
Greta no longer takes photographs.
Now, she collects secrets.
I am still Greta ...
"I stopped taking pictures the year I realized no one wanted the negatives.
They wanted stories. Preferably ones that made them feel better.
My name is Greta Anckermann.
Once, I crossed borders in boots and lipstick.
Now, I sit in Vienna and wait for the past to catch up.
I drink my coffee in silence.
I still know who collaborated.
I still know who vanished — and who made them vanish.
And I remember the man who believed in truth.
They found him in a forest. I know which one.
I don’t seek redemption.
I seek accuracy.
I kept the files. I kept the names.
Because history forgets what doesn’t serve it.
And I remember what history would rather bury."
Historical Echoes
- Katyn Massacre (1940) — silence and denial for decades
- Vienna under post-war occupation (1945–1955)
- War criminals reabsorbed into polite society
- 1968: Prague Spring, global unrest, and the return of buried truths
- Women in intelligence and counterintelligence
- Cold War tension seen through the eyes of survivors
Themes
- Moral compromise: Survival at the cost of conscience
- Female memory: Silent witnesses with sharp recall
- Postwar erasure: When nations need clean narratives
- Cold War realism: Truth becomes weaponized
- Intergenerational tension: What Greta lived through, Patrizia tries to understand
EXCERPT OF THE BOOK
Some truths can’t be published.
Some demons refuse to die.
A companion novel to Woman with a Leica, Eating with the Devil continues the riveting psychological and political unraveling of Greta Anckermann — through the eyes of Patrizia, the young journalist determined to make sense of the shadows left behind by war.
Set across Vienna, Geneva, and the United States, and spanning the years 1940 to 1948, the novel reconstructs a time when survival demanded compromise, deception was currency, and morality bent beneath the weight of shifting allegiances.
In 1968 — as Vienna trembles once again under Cold War tension and refugees flood the city — Patrizia is still determined to complete what she started. Greta continues recounting her harrowing story of wartime espionage, blackmail, and betrayal. But as she finally begins to unburden herself from decades of guilt, the confessions take a darker turn.
She speaks of crimes:
A gold heist.
Revenge murders.
Lies layered upon lies — some for survival, others not.
Patrizia, stunned, must now face Greta’s nemesis, the elusive Dr. Wallas — a man whose shadow looms not only over Greta’s past, but over Patrizia’s own family legacy.
Her pursuit of truth takes her across the Atlantic, into the office of a former war criminal. What begins as an attempt to clarify the past becomes a dangerous odyssey — one that could implicate powerful figures, reignite buried scandals, and rip through the fragile post-war order.
Because publishing Greta’s story doesn’t just risk her own reputation — it could expose a generation of collaborators, including her own father.
And in the end, some stories aren’t meant for headlines.
They’re meant for whispers.
Or silence.
Eating with the Devil is a richly woven exploration of moral ambiguity, personal loyalty, and political reckoning. A thriller without gunfire, it exposes the quieter wars — fought in closed rooms, over old photographs, in the echo between memory and denial.