Distant, silent, often drunk, Walter Urban is a difficult man to have as a father. But his son—the narrator of this slim, harrowing novel—is curious about Walter’s experiences during World War II, and so makes him a present of a blank notebook in which to write down his memories. Walter dies, however, leaving nothing but the barest skeleton of a story on those pages, leading his son to fill in the gaps himself, rightly or wrongly, with what he can piece together of his father’s early life.
This, then, is the story of Walter and his dangerously outspoken friend Friedrich Caroli, 17-year-old trainee milkers on a dairy farm in northern Germany who are tricked into volunteering for the army during the spring of 1945: the last, and, in many ways, the worst, months of the war. The men are driven to the point of madness by what they experience, and when Friedrich finally deserts his post, Walter is forced to do the unthinkable.
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"Directly confronting issues of responsibility, accountability, and legacy, this is an undeniably powerful work."
— Publishers Weekly Starred Review
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Ralf Rothmann was born in 1953 in Schleswig and grew up in the Ruhr valley. He has received numerous awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize in 2013, the Hans Fallada Prize in 2008, and the Max Frisch Prize in 2006. He lives in Berlin.
Tim Bruce has a warm, friendly, characterful voice and works extensively in voice-over, cartoons, and audiobooks. A regular on the BBC, Tim was the voice of Channel 996 for over three years. A long list of audiobook recordings includes the award-winning Blade series, Mark Billingham’s DI Tom Thorne series, Doctor Who, the Oxford Book of War Poetry, and the poetry of William Blake. Tim has also created a whole host of cartoon character voices for CBBC, Nickelodeon, Disney, and Cartoon Network.