65 years in the drawer - today a bestseller. 'The Defector' is Siegfried Lenz's second novel, written in 1951. Although completed and revised multiple times by the author, it remained unpublished until 2016. At the time of its creation, it was rejected by the publisher for political reasons. A defector to the Soviets as a novel's hero was not opportune during the Cold War. A remarkable discovery, an impressive novel about the eternal conflict between duty and conscience.