Back to Back (Paperback)
Julia Franck (author), Anthea Bell (translator)- We can order this from the publisher
The moving story of a brother and a sister caught in the tide of the Cold War
Kathe is a Jewish sculptor living in East Berlin. A survivor of the Nazi era, she is a fervent socialist who has been using her political connections to secure more significant commissions. Devoted entirely to success, she is a cruel and abrasive mother to her children. She barely acknowledges Ella's vulnerable loneliness and Thomas's quiet aspirations, and her hard-nosed brutality forces her children to build an imaginary world as a shelter from the coldness that surrounds them.
As the Berlin Wall goes up, dreams are shattered, lives fall apart and this dark fairytale of East Germany unfolds.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099572251
Number of pages: 336
Weight: 235 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 21 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Intoxicating... A curious fusion of stark realism tempered with quirkily stylistic flights of fancy: the trademark of one of Germany's finest contemporary novelists -- Malcolm Forbes * Literary Review *
Franck is an outstanding talent of the Germany literary landscape * Stuttgarter Zeitung *
Portrays the rise and fall of the state's ideals via the finely observed life of an artist and her children - a Jewish sculptor who survives to flourish, at a cost, in the GDR -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *
A virtuoso creator of poetically charged moods...never before has East Germany been so radically depicted as dead at birth as in the arresting, magical narrative web of Julia Franck * Literarische Welt *
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