This is a German prize winning novel set between the two World Wars. As someone who spent much of her childhood in Germany after the war (the result of an English father and German mother), I found it refreshing to read how awful these times were for German citizens too. As dreadful as living con...
Despite its slightly Mills and Boon title, The Blind Side of the Heart is actually a pretty serious piece of literature. By German author Julie Franck it won the German book prize in 2007 and appears in the 1001 books to read before you die list.I thought that it was a brilliantly haunting piece ...
Amid the chaos of civilians fleeing West in a provincial German railway station in 1945 Helene has brought her seven-year-old son. Having survived with him through the horrors and deprivations of the war years, she abandons him on the station platform and never returns. Many years earlier, Helene...