pickThis is a WWII historical fiction novel about GW Pabst, his family‘s move back to Vienna, and his focus on making art. I wasn‘t familiar with this storyline at all, and the reliableness of the narrator and following his artistic design of movies was an interesting way to tell this story. Making art, while compromising values for survival, is at the heart of the one.
#NotBookRelated I am in a taxi in France where someone left a New York Times on the backseat. I enjoy the article about Trump as a bystander while thinking he rules the world but it‘s in fact so sad. European leaders being so weak, Putin doing whatever he likes and Trump, well …
pickI listened to this on radio 4 after a friend mentioned it.
So gut wrenching and so important that Persephone Books have republished.
I can't believe she wrote it before WW2. But also terrifying that it was so clear to her the outcomes.
We need so desperately to learn from history 😔
The last few years I‘ve stepped back from reading about WWII because it felt so overdone. But with the rise of authoritarianism currently happening in the US it has pushed back to reading about that era. The 2 on the left I found at Hachette Books (I signed up for the newsletter & got a 20% off coupon). I have not been able to find “What We Knew” anywhere. The other 2 I found wondering around the bookstore.
pickI love Kehlmann‘s work and enjoyed this novel about director G W Pabst who made films for the Nazis during WW2. Full of moral conflict, tension & ambiguity which Kehlmann cleverly shows from different points of view (like camera angles). A tragi-comic story told with his intelligent, wry style. This felt to me more disjointed than his other books (a high bar) & lacked some momentum but still a fun, thought-provoking read and relevant today.
pickThere definitely has been a theme to my reading lately as I grapple with current events and view them through the lens of the past. Friedrich Reck was a conservative in Germany who was vehemently anti-Nazi and Hitler from the very beginning. His observations of Germany as they slid towards tyranny and horror are astute, cutting and incisive.
pickThis is published by Verso - a fabulous indie publisher. Based on as many historical documents as the author could access, it covers the life of Josef Mengele as he fled prosecution for his role at Auschwitz. A despicable man, it did raise questions though about the many complicit people in positions of power at corporations who benefitted from Nazi actions and were never punished. Thought provoking.
Hard to pick just one quote from this book, appallingly timely in its observations applied to current events, 90 years later.
“With his oily hair falling into his face as he ranted, he had the look of a man trying to seduce the cook. I got the impression of basic stupidity, the same kind of his crony Papen - the kind of stupidity which equates statemanshio with cheating at a horse trade.”
Back in beautiful Bath Uk 🇬🇧 and yes 😆purchased a bagful of persephones from their wonderful bookshop one of which is this one newly re printed , Persephone do an amazing job of reprinting lost authors / works I have never read a bad one #Persephonebookclub #persephonebooks
