First published 2001
Helmut works in a photography lab during the 1930s, developing images that capture a nation transforming around him. Years later, Lore leads her younger siblings across war-torn Germany after their parents disappear, desperately searching for their grandmother while avoiding Allied forces. Decades after the war ends, Micha discovers his beloved grandfather may have committed atrocities as a Wehrmacht soldier before Soviet forces captured him. Each character confronts the weight of history in their own time. Helmut witnesses the rise of the Nazi regime through the lens of his camera. Lore must protect her family while grappling with the collapse of everything she believed. Micha struggles between his love for his grandfather and the possibility that the man helped perpetrate genocide. The three stories reveal how ordinary people become entangled in extraordinary evil, and how subsequent generations inherit both guilt and the need for understanding.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: generational-trauma, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Germany
Period: 1930s, Post-World War II
288 pages · Hardcover · Pantheon
Content warnings: violence, war