"Tales in a Minor Key" is a collection of short stories, about twentieth century Central European Jews coping with the trials and aftereffects of the two world wars and of the twin evils of fascism and communism. The narrator of "Dachau Idyll," a Romanian Jew, and her physician husband Gabriel, settle in Dachau after the war and try to pass as Catholics there. Before long, to sustain this lie, they go as far as pretending that Gabriel had served in Africa under Rommel. Living in constant fear of being exposed seriously affects the narrator's own sense of identity. In "Feeding the Piranhas,"...

The novel is about the Cambridge-educated heir of a Pittsburgh steel fortune, who, during the Cold War, turns traitor to his country and causes the death of some honorable and well-intentioned people. The main story is about how this man, short of any solid moral principles, deals with his disgrace, while the waves of shame that wash up on his familys stormy shores devastate the lives of its other moneyed members. The suspense arises from the psychologically clever and morally compelling revenge of the son of one of the men who lost his life because of the heirs treason.