Blueprint
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
In this vivid portrayal of a post WWII Europe nearly wiped off the map by devastation and mass killings, author Jay Prasad weaves together a story of human vulnerability and endurance.
The novel‘s heroine, Hannah Müller, a Bauhaus artist tormented and discredited by the Nazis, finds that her liberators are no better than the oppressors; the Russians loot, rape, and herd women to work in labor gangs, and the Americans are cold, aloof, and suspicious. Fortunately, she meets young Captain Eric Grossman who works as a lawyer for the Americans; together they attend the Nuremberg trials and seek a solution to the question that haunts them, “Who authorized the Holocaust?” They do not quite succeed and move on to the Nazi trials in Poland, where Hannah falls in love with Daniel Neumann, a Holocaust survivor. The three of them continue their quest for the elusive identity of the person responsible for the Holocaust, and finally find the answer in the private papers of Hannah’s uncle, a high-ranking Nazi.
Hannah, disillusioned and no longer considering herself a German, leaves her homeland and tries to regain her lost artistic soul as she moves from continent to continent to find a place where she can shelve her past and be born anew.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Prasad paints the postwar world with broad, sweeping strokes and painfully accurate details in this accomplished novel. Middle-aged Hannah Muller, living in Berlin, has an ideal Aryan appearance, but she was blacklisted by the Nazis as an open-minded German artist. After Germany is divided among the victors, Hannah grows numb as she's repeatedly raped by occupying Russians. Her life changes when she's wooed by Eric Grossman, a young Jewish American who has come to work at the Nuremberg trials. Although "conflict... seemed to pursue her like the Greek Furies wherever she went," Hannah, desperate for work, finds it creating artistic propaganda for the Russians and then for the Americans, and her painting talents are enhanced by her abilities as a multilingual translator. She attends Nuremberg and other trials with Eric, who has gained permission from the military to work as a lawyer and is seeking information about the Nazis' plan to conquer Eastern Europe and exterminate the Jews. Eventually, she travels to the U.S. with him; in America, she finds bigotry against Germans and panic about the Red Scare, and she contemplates contradictory ideologies of various nationalities before returning to Germany. Prasad's novel, tightly written and comprehensive, provides readers with a powerful meditation on the aftermath of the Holocaust. (BookLife)
