The Blind Side of the Heart_Franck
2011 Longlist

The Blind Side of the Heart

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

Amid the chaos of civilians fleeing West in a provincial German railway station in 1945, Helene has brought her seven-year-old son. Having survived with him through the horrors 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 comes home only to die. Their Jewish mother withdraws from the hostility of her surroundings into a state of mental confusion. Helene calls the condition blindness of the heart, and fears the growing coldness of her mother, who hardly seems to notice her daughters any more.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Julia
Franck

Julia Franck was born in Berlin in 1970. Her novel The Blind Side of the Heart won the German Book Prize and sold over a million copies in Germany alone. It was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize, and was named one of the best books of the year by the Guardian and US magazine Kirkus Reviews. Back to Back is her second novel to be translated into English. She lives in Berlin.

Julia Franck was born in Berlin in 1970. Her novel The Blind Side of the Heart won the German Book Prize and sold over a million copies in Germany alone. It was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize, and was named one of the best books of the year by the Guardian and US magazine Kirkus Reviews. Back to Back is her second novel to be translated into English. She lives in Berlin.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Anthea
Bell

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