In his ambitious new novel, Out of Such Darkness, Robert Ronsson takes on two of the modern era’s founding atrocities, the onslaught on Jews in Germany and the events of 9/11, and finds links or continuities which demonstrate, among other things, that nothing has changed. Cameron, a writer of detective fiction, describes his love affair with Wolf, a member of the Hitler Youth. Jay, a ‘brand recovery consultant’, is spared the destruction of the World Trade Centre that annihilates his colleagues and in dealing with survivor guilt comes up against the same intolerance that disfigured the earlier period.

This is a literate and well-researched book. The streets, lodging houses and underworld of 1930s Berlin are convincingly portrayed, while the life and work of Christopher Isherwood and the film made from one of his stories, Cabaret, are drawn on in ways that illuminate rather than overshadow Ronsson’s words. Likewise his own background in New York (he was in the air when the planes struck) gives him an insider’s view of the physical and emotional landscape inhabited by Jay and his circle. On one point I did waver for a while. Repeatedly alluding to the watches, cars and perfumes of rich Manhattanites treads a fine line between satirising their materialism and sharing their fixation. But in this case having one’s author writing about what he knows aids authenticity, even – or especially – when glimpses of nostalgia for the old lifestyle remain. The most effective caricatures contain a germ of affection.

The interplay between the two strands in the novel will be left for you to discover for yourself. No plot spoilers here. But two themes and a minor quibble are worth sharing. To get the last of these out of the way, I am not sure the device of having Cameron’s and Jay’s narratives printed in different fonts is necessary. The italics used for the voice in Jay’s head is helpful but in conjunction with the split typography makes the book look fragmented. This works against the convergence of themes which is being attempted and underestimates the reader’s ability to tell them apart. It is a personal opinion but I like to have my eyes gradually opened, not have my hand too obviously held.

More salient, however, are the motifs shared by the two stories. Cameron and Jay are both Englishmen abroad, tempted by the excitements on offer in their adopted towns. The portability of a sense of belonging and the attractions of a new life pitted against loyalty to home are issues never far from today’s headlines with half the world on the move. And in the great events and personal crises that unfold on the banks of the Hudson and the Spree we can detect in conflict, or maybe collusion, the two poles of the human psyche. Thanatos gorges on the persecution of Jews and in the stricken towers’ hecatomb of pulverised yuppies. Eros torments Cameron in the shape of his Aryan lover while the unspeakable arouses in Jay a reckless lubricity. Is this the first attempt to investigate the love life of New Yorkers as the dust cloud settled? If so it is not the least brave thing in a book unafraid to shock and to challenge. The collapsing Towers, after all, offer a striking image of detumescence. The potency in ruins was economic and political, but in their response did individuals, powerless otherwise, attempt to rewind the film in phallic acts of affirmation and defiance? The question, and its indelicacy, is mine; but the credit for prompting it, and other new takes on subjects thought drained of surprise, goes to Ronsson’s provocative novel.