Sent to a remote village for the duration of the war, two children devise physical and mental exercises to render themselves invulnerable to pain and sentiment. They steal, kill, blackmail and survive; others – the cobbler, the harelipped girl who craves love, the children’s parents – are sucked into war’s brutal maelstrom. The Notebook distils the experience of Nazi occupation and Soviet ‘liberation’ during World War II into a stark fable of timeless relevance.