A Man Lies Dreaming' by Lavie Tidhar‏

**Comes out March, 2016.

A Jewish writer of pulp fiction is detained in a concentration camp during World War II. He has lost his family and is digging graves for the growing number of dead bodies in the camp. He has nothing left. But as a writer, perhaps out of habit or perhaps to keep himself sane, he still has stories buzzing around in his head. And the story he's writing, a private eye mystery set in London, is the crux of Tidhar's novel. I cannot reveal who he casts as his (hero/anti-hero?) private investigator, without spoiling the story, except to say that it's amazing the author went down this road. It's even more amazing that the plot works, despite the twisted politics of the time, the intense racism, the threat of world war. 

In a concentration camp, you're barely there and you may not live to see the next day. But in this narrator's case the imagination burns deep, too deep to extinguish. 'A Man Lies Dreaming' is some powerful fiction, though many of the characters were real. If you're like me, you'll be consulting Wikipedia to see who they really were, to try to wrap your head around this incredible, unforgettable tale.