| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Sunday Telegraph
‘In the hands of Timm, now a distinguished writer, this domestic drama serves as a microcosm of the German catastrophe’
Review
'There is something of a nightmarish quality in Timm's powerful memoir of the elder brother he lost in the war ... The tone throughout is tender but unsentimental. And in the hands of Timm, now a distinguished writer, this domestic drama serves as a microcosm of the German catastrophe' Sunday Telegraph 'This remarkable short book combines a poignant memoir of Timm's upstanding, resourceful father and his loyal, peaceable mother with a perceptive analysis of the traditional values that helped to lead a nation to obey inhuman orders' Sunday Times 'This book is informed by a deep understanding of its horrors, anxieties and legacies' Publishers Weekly 'Uwe Timm, a well-known novelist in Germany, is determined "not to smooth it all out in the telling", not to make it easy for us to understand and thereby to excuse' Daily Telegraph
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a beautiful meditation on siblings, Germans, guilt and war. The reviewer who said it was the worst book he's ever read is someone who reads "war books",so it's not surprising he missed the whole point. He's allowed to do so,but I hope his misinformed review doesn't put people off from discovering a great German writer and a thought-provoking book. This is a small book, not as impressive as his great The Invention of Curried Sausages, but highly recommended, with not one extraneous word. Of special interest to those who admire Reichl's Lost or who ponder the frequent inhumanity of mankind.
Format:Paperback
This is a beautifully written book by an author who is master of his craft. It is a touchingly personal account of a post-war German struggling with his family's heavily-laden past. Ultimately however the book offers little in the way of insights. This is frustrating for the reader, and one senses it must have been the same for the author.
Timm makes the most of a few fragments of war diary written by his elder brother, who volunteered for the Waffen-SS and died of wounds on the Eastern Front. He combs the diary for signs his brother disapproved of what he was doing. After all, the Germany Army had a terrible record of atrocities in the East. Yet all he finds are factual reports about attacks, casualties, and the not particularly admirable remark that an "Ivan" provided "fodder for my machine gun."
Shortly before he was wounded, the brother closes his diary "because I don't see any point in recording the cruel things that sometimes happen." A sign of repentance?" Possibly. But maybe he just got fed up with writing about the horrors of war, all the more since the Waffen-SS were strictly forbidden to keep such diaries.
I am moved by Timm's striving to find a positive thought about his brother, and also his rigid, war-denying father. But in the end, he does not really make it. He is of a German generation which has to suffer with the memory that their brothers and fathers supported a war of aggression which Germans cruelly and selfishly foisted on other peoples. To the credit of Uwe Timm and his generation, Germans have meanwhile honourably acknowledged guilt and reconciled with past enemies. This more recent past is the only one they can comfortably live with.
Timm makes the most of a few fragments of war diary written by his elder brother, who volunteered for the Waffen-SS and died of wounds on the Eastern Front. He combs the diary for signs his brother disapproved of what he was doing. After all, the Germany Army had a terrible record of atrocities in the East. Yet all he finds are factual reports about attacks, casualties, and the not particularly admirable remark that an "Ivan" provided "fodder for my machine gun."
Shortly before he was wounded, the brother closes his diary "because I don't see any point in recording the cruel things that sometimes happen." A sign of repentance?" Possibly. But maybe he just got fed up with writing about the horrors of war, all the more since the Waffen-SS were strictly forbidden to keep such diaries.
I am moved by Timm's striving to find a positive thought about his brother, and also his rigid, war-denying father. But in the end, he does not really make it. He is of a German generation which has to suffer with the memory that their brothers and fathers supported a war of aggression which Germans cruelly and selfishly foisted on other peoples. To the credit of Uwe Timm and his generation, Germans have meanwhile honourably acknowledged guilt and reconciled with past enemies. This more recent past is the only one they can comfortably live with.
Format:Paperback
I read this book as part of a class looking at the legacy of Nazism and the War in Germany before, during and after the Holocaust.
Uwe Timm writes with a very interesting style that has a dream-esque quality. He uses his brother's diary, his own memories, and the stories told by members of his family to examine his brother and father's participation as soldiers in Germany, and his own relationship to them growing up and as an adult.
Very good. Timm asks some of the worlds most difficult questions, all the more relevant because of his closeness to the actors.
Uwe Timm writes with a very interesting style that has a dream-esque quality. He uses his brother's diary, his own memories, and the stories told by members of his family to examine his brother and father's participation as soldiers in Germany, and his own relationship to them growing up and as an adult.
Very good. Timm asks some of the worlds most difficult questions, all the more relevant because of his closeness to the actors.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Historical > 1901 Onwards
- Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Europe
- Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Germany
- Books > History > Europe > Germany
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
