sentences:  Tunis considered this second World War II book to be his best work.Horn Book agreed, calling it "his finest novel... With its irony and eloquence the story not only shows the futility of war but carries the central character to the heights of the protagonist in a Greek tragedy".Opening with an Author's Note stating "This is a book about the conscience of a man", the story tells of a German sergeant, a convicted war criminal remembered by the French as the Butcher of Nogent-Plage, who returns to the area twenty years after the war's end, to play soccer.