The title of Rachel Seiffert’s second novel, “Afterwards” (Pantheon, 336 pages, $25), refers to the time that follows a violent act. This is not necessarily a time of healing. David Bell, an aging widower living in London, flew a bomber in Royal Air Force raids against the Mau-Mau uprising, in Kenya, in the 1950s. Up in the air, he saw very little carnage, but he is haunted by guilt. For decades, he refused to talk about his feelings with anyone other than his wife. Now that she is gone, he turns to his granddaughter’s boyfriend, an ex-serviceman himself, named Joseph Mason.

Joseph, who served the British Army in Northern Ireland, is even more tight-lipped than David. His friends and family know only that something very upsetting happened to Joseph — he shot a man at a checkpoint, we learn.

Ms. Seiffert’s protagonist, Alice Bell, has to navigate between these two difficult men. Indeed, “Afterwards” is a novel about difficult conversations. Ms. Seiffert’s skillful dialogue alternates with short descriptions that track each speaker’s mood. The unspoken world of war penetrates cozy daily routines. Here is the exchange in which Alice begins to ask Joseph about Northern Ireland:

—What were you reading just then?

—About the IRA. The Garda know where they have most of their arms dumps now.

—Will they ever open them, do you think?

—I could tell you what the article said, if you want.

He didn’t sound defensive, looking at her across the table, eyes clear and friendly enough, but the answer hadn’t come immediately. Difficult to say if she was being told to drop it. Joseph was watching her, as though waiting for her to respond, but he wasn’t exactly opening up the conversation: if you want. He flicked through to the back pages.

Ms. Seiffert keeps very close to the moments of conversation. Her novel has an intense, interior feel that contrasts sharply with the spectacle of service abroad: David’s tales of Kenya take place not just on another continent, but on another plane of existence.

This almost claustrophobic technique carries important thematic baggage. Both David and Joseph would have an easier time talking about their experiences, Ms. Seiffert implies, were they not plunged among comfortable interiors and close friends — parents, roommates, and the denizens of local pubs take up most of the novel’s time.

The crisis comes when David finally confides in Joseph. Joseph has put off this confession, but Ms. Seiffert has carefully charted the logic of their conversation, and we understand, with Joseph, why it is inevitable. Her attention to domestic conversation has made the dread and pull of far-removed memories real.

Like her contemporary Ali Smith, Ms. Seiffert writes about England in a way that is quiet, even wan, yet broadly politicized. Ms. Smith may be the more ambitious, taking on abstract problems such as surveillance and privacy, but Ms. Seiffert is the more palpable, dragging ugly things onto the bourgeois rug of contemporary England.

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The relation between evil and personal privacy also occupies “The Savior” (Simon & Schuster, 208 pages, $23), by Emerson String Quartet violinist Eugene Drucker. Mr. Drucker, an eighttime Grammy winner, has turned to fiction to frame an enduring problem of classical music: What to make of the fact that Nazis spent their evenings listening to Beethoven?

Mr. Drucker’s father, himself a violinist, left Germany in 1938. After his father’s death, Mr. Drucker read the autobiography of Albert Speer and discovered that one of his father’s colleagues had played for Speer and other top officials late in the war. His own protagonist, Gottfried Keller — named for the 19th-century Swiss novelist who gave up painting for literature — is pressed into service by the Nazis, whom he does not admire. Too weak to serve in the Wehrmacht, he plays violin for wounded Germans and eventually for prisoners in a concentration camp.

While reading, I listened to recordings of some of the pieces Keller plays, and the mimetic payoff — to hear how shrill and precious Paganini sounds in the context of this history — was immense.

Mr. Drucker writes tellingly about the emotional challenges of performance, but the finest thing in this novel is his imagination of compromise. When Keller, a gentile, fails to encourage a persecuted friend to protest racist reviews, his self-confidence falters. Craving a Jewish stamp of approval, Keller then overstates his sympathies, and tries to join an all-Jewish orchestra. Offered Jewish papers, he finds himself unwilling to accept them. Spooked and selfalienated, his belief in music itself suffers, and his career loses its focus.

During his last performance for the camp’s inmates, Keller plays Bach’s second Partita in D minor. Itistheperformanceofhislife. But after it is over, the Kommandant asks Keller hard questions about his motives and inspirations. “The Savior,” driven by historical question, plays a remarkably scrupulous game, admitting no heroes and giving no answers.

blytal@nysun.com