Shadow Without a Name

A stunning debut by one of Mexico’s most dazzling younger writers, who “represents the continuation and reinvigoration of literature in our country” (Carlos Fuentes)

In 1916, Victor Kretzchmar and Thadeus Dreyer face each other over a chessboard on a train heading to the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s disastrous Eastern Front. The stakes are high: the winner will take Kretzchmar’s identity as a railway signalman and live out the war in safety. The loser will go to certain death.

In 1943, the decorated World War I hero and influential Nazi General Thadeus Dreyer is in charge of training doubles to stand in for leading Nazis at dangerous public events. But when the Amphitryon Project falls out of favor with Goering, Dreyer and the doubles disappear.
In 1960, Adolf Eichmann, a master chess player, is arrested in Buenos Aires, where he has been living under an assumed name. One of the few escaped Nazis to be recaptured, he is extradited to Israel and executed. Only an old Polish count claims to know Eichmann’s true identity, but he dies before it can be revealed.

The clues to what ties all of these men together are concealed in an old manuscript that the count has left to his heirs—an unlikely trio of misfits who suddenly find themselves at the center of a dangerous game.

This gripping novel from acclaimed author Ignacio Padilla explores questions of identity and history against the turbulent backdrop of twentieth-century Europe.

Ignacio Padilla is the author of several award-winning novels and short story collections, and is currently the cultural attaché at the Mexican Embassy in London.