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.
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“Finding answers and hope through post-Holocaust fiction is a challenge, yet this gripping audiobook succeeds because of the power of the dialogue as delivered by narrator Nina Franoszek…The result is a powerful performance by Franoszek that complements the novel superbly. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
“From the first page The German House creates a movie in the reader’s mind, and it doesn’t tear off until the last chapter.”
— Der Spiegel (Hamburg)“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“This is one of the most compelling novels about the Frankfurt Trials of 1963 when Germany must once again confront its past, and attempt to justify its individual reasons for doing nothing when so many could smell the greasy smoke coming from the smokestacks of the crematoriums.”
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