It is 1941, and Antwerp is in the grip of Nazi occupation. Wilfried Wils, novice policeman and frustrated writer, has no intention of being a hero. He just wants to keep his head down; to pretend the fear and violence around him aren't happening. But war has a way of catching up with people. When his idealistic best friend draws him into the growing resistance movement, and an SS commander tries to force him into betraying his fellow policemen, Wilfried's loyalties become horribly, fatally torn. Should he comply, or fight back? As the beatings, destruction and round-ups intensify across the city, he is forced into an act that will shatter his life and, years later, have consequences he could never have imagined. A searing portrayal of a man trying to survive amid the treachery, compromises and moral darkness of occupation, Will asks what any of us would do to stay alive.
It is wartime. Antwerp is in the grip of violence and distrust. Wilfried Wils regards himself as a poet in the making but at the same time he has to get by as an auxiliary policeman. The beautiful Yvette falls in love with him; her brother is a daredevil who sticks his neck out to help the Jews. Wilfried's artistic mentor Meanbeard is keen to see all the Jews annihilated.

Wavering uneasily between two worlds, Wilfried tries to survive as the pursuit of the Jews continues relentlessly. Years later he tells his story to his great grandson. Olyslaegers disputes the widely accepted boundaries between good and evil and makes the book resonate ingeniously with the twenty-first century.