Image for The house by the lake  : Berlin, one house, five families, a hundred years of history

The house by the lake : Berlin, one house, five families, a hundred years of history

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2015LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2016A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK'A superb portrait of twentieth century Germany seen through the prism of a house which was lived in, and lost, by five different families.

A remarkable book.' Tom Holland'Personal and panoramic, heart-wrenching yet uplifting, this is history at its most alive.' A.D.

Miller'A passionate memoir.' Neil MacGregor_______________________________________In 2013, Thomas Harding returned to his grandmother's house on the outskirts of Berlin which she had been forced to leave when the Nazis swept to power.

What was once her 'soul place' now stood empty and derelict.

A concrete footpath cut through the garden, marking where the Berlin Wall had stood for nearly three decades. In a bid to save the house from demolition, Thomas began to unearth the history of the five families who had lived there: a nobleman farmer, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned Nazi composer, a widow and her children and a Stasi informant.

Discovering stories of domestic joy and contentment, of terrible grief and tragedy, and of a hatred handed down through the generations, a history of twentieth century Germany and the story of a nation emerged.

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Product Details
Windmill Books
0099592045 / 9780099592044
Paperback / softback
943.08
02/06/2016
United Kingdom
English
xxi, 442 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and whi
20 cm
Reprint. Originally published: London: William Heinemann, 2015.