{"product_id":"9780008100780","title":"Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets","description":"\u003ch2\u003e\n          \u003cstrong\u003eA \u003cem\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e staff writer, investigates his grandfather, a Nazi Party Chief, in this \"unflinching, gorgeously written, and deeply moving exploration of morality, family, and war” (Patrick Radden Keefe, author of\u003cem\u003e Empire of Pain\u003c\/em\u003e)\u003c\/strong\u003e\n        \u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003e\n          \u003cstrong\u003e‘The book we need right now’ Atul Gawande, author of \u003cem\u003eBeing Mortal\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\n        \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat do we owe the past? How to make peace with a dark family history? Burkhard Bilger hardly knew his grandfather growing up. His parents immigrated to Oklahoma from Germany after World War II, and though his mother was an historian, she rarely talked about her father or what he did during the war. Then one day a packet of letters arrived from Germany, yellowing with age, and a secret history began to unfold.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKarl Gönner was a schoolteacher and Nazi party member from the Black Forest. In 1940, he was sent to a village in occupied France and tasked with turning its children into proper Germans. A fervent Nazi when the war began, he grew close to the villagers over the next four years, till he came to think of himself as their protector, shielding them from his own party’s brutality. Yet he was arrested in 1946 and accused of war crimes. Was he guilty or innocent? A vicious collaborator or just an ordinary man, struggling to atone for his country’s crimes? Bilger goes to Germany to find out.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat follows is a literary suspense story: a tale of chance encounters and serendipitous discoveries in villages and dusty archives across Germany and France. Intimate and far-reaching,\u003cem\u003e Fatherland\u003c\/em\u003e is an extraordinary odyssey through the great upheavals of the past century, tracing one family’s path through history’s wreckage.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor readers of Bart van Es’s \u003cem\u003eThe Cut Out Girl\u003c\/em\u003e or Edmund de Waal’s \u003cem\u003eThe Hare with the Amber Eyes\u003c\/em\u003e, this is a story of middle lands, torn allegiances and loaded family inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Fatherland, Burkhard Bilger delves into the personal and social implications of his family's past, presenting a top-tier autobiography that is as much a historical exploration as it is a memoir. The narrative is a poignant reminder of the Holocaust's impact on the 20th century, and the lasting effects it has on modern society.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor fans of Natalia Ginzburg (The Little Virtues), Adam Lazarus (Hail to the Redskins), Rebecca Donner (All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days), Julia Boyd (The Excellent Doctor Blackwell), and Laurence Rees (The Nazi Mind).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHarperCollins 2023\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Burkhard Bilger, Read by Burkhard Bilger","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46889119645845,"sku":"9780008100780","price":45.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0484\/3175\/9509\/files\/9780008100780_e8c505d1-e0f7-4929-9e8b-45a123923c49.jpg?v=1776888407","url":"https:\/\/harpercollins.com.au\/products\/9780008100780","provider":"HarperCollins AU","version":"1.0","type":"link"}