Each of us has something
that feels essential to who we are. For Hans Frambach, it's the
crimes of the Nazi era, which have hurt him for as long as he can remember.
That's why he became an archivist at the Bureau of Past Management; now, though,
he's wondering if he should make a change. For his best friend, Graziela, that
past was also her focal point--until she met a man who desired her. From then
on, sexual pleasure became the key to her life; a concept she's now beginning
to doubt. Hans and Graziela thought the Nazi crimes were the inheritance that
neither could bear, but can we really blame Nazism for
everything? Iris Hanika shows how the crimes of
the Nazi era hold the Germans in their clutches to this day. Can a country
manage its past, or ought we to remain helpless in the face of the horrific
crimes of the Holocaust? Iris Hanika has all the humour, love of experimentation and political rage of a German Lucy Ellmann, over fewer pages.
‘A novel that opens up a
window. A masterpiece.’ Denis Scheck, ARD druckfrisch
‘It’s impossible to live
with this guilt. Making that so emphatically clear by means of fiction, after
sixty-five years of intense debate, is this novel’s great achievement.’ Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 'A brave account of one man’s struggle to come to terms with his nation’s past, which draws an artful distinction between memory and memorial.’ Michael Arditti