Back to Back
ABOUT
THE BOOK
The moving story of a brother and a sister caught in the tide of the Cold War
Käthe is a Jewish sculptor living in East Berlin. A survivor of the Nazi era, she is a fervent socialist who has been using her political connections to secure more significant commissions. Devoted entirely to success, she is a cruel and abrasive mother to her children. Käthe barely acknowledges Ella’s vulnerable loneliness and Thomas’s quiet aspirations, and her hard-nosed brutality forces her children to build an imaginary world as a shelter from the coldness that surrounds them. But the siblings find themselves enclosed by the Berlin Wall, and unable to pursue their dreams.
Heartbreaking and shocking, Back to Back is a dark fairytale of East Germany – a moving personal story of love, betrayal and disillusionment within a single family that reflects the greater tragedy of the world around them.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
Julia Franck’s latest novel focuses on her grandmother, sculptor Indgborg Hunzinger, who fled from the Nazis to Italy. Agter the war she decided to live in the communist part of Germany where her children Ella and Thomas grew up. The siblings were left to themselves and the emotional coldness and violence left their traces. A family history that reflects life in the era of the cold war. Following her critically acclaimed novel The Blind Side of the Heart, this is Julia Franck’s second novel translated into English.