by Walter Abish
First published 1983
Ulrich Hargenau comes back to Würtenburg from Paris to find his world fractured. His wife Paula has joined a terrorist group that bombs a police station. Ulrich faces a terrible choice: testify against Paula and her fellow terrorists to save their lives, or stay silent like his father, who died heroically in the 1944 plot against Hitler. The new Germany surrounds him with contradictions. The town of Brumholdstein honors the philosopher Brumhold but sits on top of a former concentration camp. Workers discover a mass grave of death camp victims beneath the surface. Assassins target Ulrich twice as the state crushes the terrorist movement. American culture floods the country while the Nazi past lurks everywhere. Ulrich struggles with the central question that haunts every character: How German is he? His father chose death over betrayal, but Ulrich chooses survival over loyalty, leaving him to navigate the moral complexities of a nation trying to forget its dark heritage.
Genres: fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: moral-dilemma, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Würtenburg, Brumholdstein, Paris
Period: 1944, Post-World War II
256 pages · Paperback · Faber & Faber
Content warnings: violence