Traitor: A Novel of World War II

Product Information

I liked that this covered the history of World War II from a different perspective than most historical novels do.

Review: Traitor: A Novel of World War II by Amanda McCrina Review: Traitor: A Novel of World War II by Amanda McCrina

Traitor is incredibly action packed and it also asks us how, when red is blue one day and green the next, we can define ourselves.Thank you to NetGalley, Farrar Straus Giroux Publishers and author Amanda McCrine for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC of this very interesting story. I will say that I found the book interesting and really appreciated reading a WWII book that wasn't set in the United Kingdom or Nazi Germany. So Tolya, my main character, is representative of the whole conflict in the novel [because he is] both Polish and Ukrainian. I reccommend this for students who want read historical fiction/WWII book, but don't want a holocaust story. It was only after several drafts that I started to realize, I may need to bring another narrator in here just to give further background information and to clarify a few things.

Traitor - Fierce Reads Traitor - Fierce Reads

Their paths cross in 1944 when, in a split-second decision, Tolya shoots his unit’s political officer and Aleksey’s squad of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army rescues him at the behest of a mysterious informer within the Soviet ranks. He knew how he would die for it—piece by piece, in the dark, in the basement of Brygidki prison—and he knew what his death sentence would say: Tolya Korolenko, traitor to the motherland.I think that’s important to me: knowing what young people—especially in my community—want to read, what kind of things are they looking for? I had no idea that things were so desperately bleak in Poland during WWII- obviously I knew it was no picnic, but this was eye opening, without a doubt.

Traitor by Amanda McCrina | Goodreads

We also see quite a bit of the war and the effects of it, as it switches POVs, alternating between 1941 and 1944. And she does a great job of distilling events down into an easily understandable setting for her plot.

As mentioned, the dual POV works for this novel, and the two points of view we see are Tolya (who is in third person) and Aleksey (who is in first person. It deals with two time period and goes back and forth with different characters, so it was a little confusing at times, but man was it worth it! That said, the world the author weaves is darkly fascinating and we learn a lot about a part of the war that is often glossed over- one that is messy without clear heroes and villains. The narrative’s nonlinear structure is effective at building suspense and garnering sympathy for its protagonists, though some confusion over who is fighting whom is warranted in this complicated slice of history that does not shy away from depicting scenes of violence and torture. He especially doesn’t trust Solovey, the squad’s war-scarred young leader, who has plenty of secrets of his own.

Traitor | Amanda McCrina | FSG Books for Young Readers

The underworld's rising star is 17-year-old Kaz Brekker, known as Dirtyhands for his brutal amorality. The exploration of this complicated ethnic identity becomes one of the threads woven through the book in a world where Poles and Ukrainians are engaging in ethnic warfare and Tolya is caught between two worlds.McCrina weaves together the stories of orphaned Tolya, first seen serving as a sharpshooter in the Soviet army, and Aleksey, leader of a Ukrainian paramilitary squad.