Instruct: Classify the given review as either positive or negative.
Query: Continues to improve with age...

This timeless novel is part character sketch, part comedy, and part morality tale. Set in early 1944 at a training academy for Wehrmacht officers, the story features a group of unforgettable personalities, all finding their way through the moral fog of war. Cynics, idealists, and those just trying to survive, clash following the murder of a strong-willed junior officer. Kirst draws a painfully humanizing sketch of Germany during the National Socialist era, with sometimes hilarious glimpses of a tragic society en route to "final victory." Written two decades after WWII, the themes are still lamentably relevant in the 21st Century.