博客來Winner of the German Book Prize, The Blindness of the Heart is a dark marvel of a novel by one of Europe’s freshest young voicesa family story spanning two world wars and several generations in a German family. In the devastating opening scene, a woman named Helene stands with her seven-year-old son amid the chaos of civilians fleeing West in a provincial German railway station in 1945. Having survived with him through the horrors and deprivations of the war years, she abandons him on the station platform and never returns.
Many years earlier, Helene and her sister Martha's childhood in rural Germany is abruptly ended by the outbreak of the First World War. Her father, sent to the eastern front, comes home only to die and their Jewish mother withdraws from the hostility of her surroundings into a state of mental confusion. In the early 1920s, after their father's death, she and Martha move to Berlin, where Helene falls in love with a philosophy student named Carl, and finds a place for herself for the very first time. But when he dies just before their engagement, life becomes largely meaningless for her, and takes refuge in her work as a nurse. At a party she meets Wilhelm, an ambitious civil engineer who wants to build motorways for the Reich and to make Helene his wife. Their marriage, which soon proves disastrous, takes Helene to Stettin, where her son is born. She finds the love demanded by the little boy more than she can provide, and soon she cannot shake off the idea of simply disappearing.
Julia Franck’s unforgettable English language debut throws new light on life in early twentieth century Germany, revealing the breathtaking scope of its citizens’ denialthe blindness of the heart” that survival often demanded. The reader, on the other hand, brings his own historical perspective to bear on the events unfolding, and the result is a disturbing and compulsive reading experience about a country ravaged from the inside out.
Many years earlier, Helene and her sister Martha's childhood in rural Germany is abruptly ended by the outbreak of the First World War. Her father, sent to the eastern front, comes home only to die and their Jewish mother withdraws from the hostility of her surroundings into a state of mental confusion. In the early 1920s, after their father's death, she and Martha move to Berlin, where Helene falls in love with a philosophy student named Carl, and finds a place for herself for the very first time. But when he dies just before their engagement, life becomes largely meaningless for her, and takes refuge in her work as a nurse. At a party she meets Wilhelm, an ambitious civil engineer who wants to build motorways for the Reich and to make Helene his wife. Their marriage, which soon proves disastrous, takes Helene to Stettin, where her son is born. She finds the love demanded by the little boy more than she can provide, and soon she cannot shake off the idea of simply disappearing.
Julia Franck’s unforgettable English language debut throws new light on life in early twentieth century Germany, revealing the breathtaking scope of its citizens’ denialthe blindness of the heart” that survival often demanded. The reader, on the other hand, brings his own historical perspective to bear on the events unfolding, and the result is a disturbing and compulsive reading experience about a country ravaged from the inside out.
