Paul Pickering’s new anti-war novel Lucy is about obedience and rebellion, how one survivor in the actual and moral wasteland of immediate post-war Berlin takes over the lives of three others, psychologically and sexually, in the way Hitler took over a country. The worldwide protests surrounding the 2024 conflict in Gaza mirror the rebel spirit at the heart of Pickering’s important, groundbreaking novel. Set partly in a German kibbutz, started by Nazis to remove Jews, there is a clash between utopian ideas and the toxic nationalism necessary to found the state of Israel. Operation Lucy, once an idealistic, anti-Nazi espionage ring, of which all the main characters are part, has become a self-devouring monster. Lucy is darkly comic, showing how best intentions, when they pass through the looking-glass of human failings, change to the opposite. Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” means no escape because of contradictory rules, “Lucy” is the Lucifer paradox, where the only good is bad, and only bad is good.A thrilling, disturbing and utterly compelling read from one of the UK’s most celebrated authors.