Raoul Wallenberg was swallowed up by the Soviet prison system in 1945. The man who had used his consummate organisational and communication skills and his extraordinary coolness and courage to protect thousands of Budapest's Jews was reduced to communicating with fellow inmates by tapping on pipes in Moscow's Lefortovo prison. Carlberg's biography is a triptych: Wallenberg's early years; Budapest; and his family's search for the truth. As a young man from a wealthy Stockholm family, he had energy, creative talent and a head for business. In Budapest in those appalling six months from his arrival in July 1944 he applied his abilities to saving Jews from under the noses of the Nazis. The final section is a devastating indictment of official Swedish timidity – the shocking machinations that kept Wallenberg's heroic mother, stepfather and half-brother from the truth. This is a fine achievement: meticulous, precise and understated. All that's missing is Wallenberg's own voice, so cruelly silenced.
