Synopses & Reviews
"Challenging, beautifully written "--
Library JournalHailed by The New Yorker as one of the best young novelists and recipient of Germanys most prestigious literary awards, Marcel Beyer returns with a brilliantly wrought novel that brings to life both an individual and a whole world: the zoologist Ludwig Kaltenburg, loosely based on Nobel Prize-winner Konrad Lorenz, and his institute for research into animal behavior.
Hermann Funk first meets Kaltenburg when still a child in Posen in the 1930s. Hermanns father, a botanist, and Kaltenburg are close friends, but a rift occurs. In 1945, fleeing the war, the Funks perish in the Dresden bombing, and Hermann finds his way to Kaltenburgs newly established institute. He becomes Kaltenburgs protégé, embracing the Institutes unconventional methods. Yet parts of Kaltenburgs past life remain unclear. Was he a member of the Nazi Party? Does he believe his discoveries about aggression in animals also apply to humans? Why has he erased the years in Posen from his official biography?
Through layers of memory and experience Hermann struggles to reconcile affection and doubt, to make sense of his childhood, even as he meets a woman with family secrets of her own.
Review
"This
mesmerizing foray into postwar Germany by celebrated author Beyer is both
a singularly researched work of historical fiction (with an ornithological bent), and a postmodern examination of the nature of memory.... Beyer paints
an engrossing and terrifying picture of Dresden during the war and later under the Communist yoke. Yet it is Beyers complex interpolation of daily memories—sometimes fused or distorted in a Proustian vein—complete with highly detailed ornithological observations that give this work its
exquisite flavor."
--Publishers Weekly, starred "Challenging, beautifully written metafiction—to some extent based on the life of Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz—examines the workings of science and the nature of academic competition...Beyer ranges over the decades from Nazism to communism to a reunited Germany to reveal our ability both to remember and to recast unpleasant memories in a more favorable light, and to show what people must hide in order to survive."
--Library Journal
Synopsis
A powerful and disturbing novel of the Nazi era and its legacy by the winner of Germanys Ernst Willner Prize. During the final days of the Reich, sound engineer Herman Karnau is brought to Hitlers bunker to record the Fuhrers last utterances. There he finds young Helga Goebbels and her siblings, children of Hitlers propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, awaiting a terrible fate. Translated by John Brownjohn.
Synopsis
A book about a great man, a giant in the world of science with all-too-human flaws, Kaltenburg is a beautifully detailed novel from a major German writer that brings to life both an individual and a whole world: Ludwig Kaltenburg and his Dresden Institute for research into animal behavior.
About the Author
MARCEL BEYER was born and raised in Cologne. The author of several novels and collections of poems, he has received numerous awards and was named one of the best young novelists in the world by the New Yorker. He lives in Dresden.