About The German House
Paperback : 336 pages
Publisher : HarperVia (October 20, 2020)
As seen in the New York Times Book Review.
A December 2019 Indie Next Pick!
Set against the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963, Annette Hess’s international bestseller is a harrowing yet ultimately uplifting coming-of-age story about a young female translator—caught between societal and familial expectations and her unique ability to speak truth to power—as she fights to expose the dark truths of her nation’s past.
If everything your family told you was a lie, how far would you go to uncover the truth?
For twenty-four-year-old Eva Bruhns, World War II is a foggy childhood memory. At the war’s end, Frankfurt was a smoldering ruin, severely damaged by the Allied bombings. But that was two decades ago. Now it is 1963, and the city’s streets, once cratered are smooth and paved. Shiny new stores replace scorched rubble. Eager for her wealthy suitor, Jürgen Schoormann, to propose, Eva dreams of starting a new life away from her parents and sister. But Eva’s plans are turned upside down when a fiery investigator, David Miller, hires her as a translator for a war crimes trial.
As she becomes more deeply involved in the Frankfurt Trials, Eva begins to question her family’s silence on the war and her future. Why do her parents refuse to talk about what happened? What are they hiding? Does she really love Jürgen and will she be happy as a housewife? Though it means going against the wishes of her family and her lover, Eva, propelled by her own conscience , joins a team of fiery prosecutors determined to bring the Nazis to justice—a decision that will help change the present and the past of her nation.
“Questions of complicity and culpability are resolved by prosecutors and daughters alike in Hess’ reveal of large truths which are obscured by larger lies.” (Kirkus Reviews)
Purchase Links
Amazon | IndieBound| Barnes & Noble | HarperVia
Elisabeth Lauffer (translator):
Elisabeth (Liz) Lauffer is a German-English literary translator based in the US. She received her B.A. in German Studies from Wesleyan University and her Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 2014, she won the Gutekunst Prize for Emerging Translators, which marked the beginning of her career in literary translation.
In addition to her book publications, Liz’s translations have appeared in No Man’s Land and the Asymptote blog. She has participated in the Frankfurt International Translators program (2019), the Artists-in-Residence program through KulturKontakt Austria (2019), and the Art OMI: Writers Translation Lab (2018).
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