Leah Kaminsky 2014. The Hollow Bones. Penguin. 336 pp.

Thinly drawn characters and plot. The Nazi-sponsored scientist-collector, his wife who has to attend Nazi bride school & give up her cultural activities for the regime. An expedition into unknown Tibet for ostensibly for science but really to seek validation for a loopy Aryan theory.

An attempt at a cautionary “lesson” for collectors, for ambition in careers and so on, but one I found unconvincing and difficult to engage with.

The real Ernst Schäfer wasn’t so different it seems, ornithologist, claimed to be in the SS under duress, but still became part of the Nazi diaspora to South America post-war (despite being exonerated for war crimes).