To Die in Spring
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The lunacy of the final months of World War II, as experienced by a young German soldier
Distant, silent, often drunk, Walter Urban is a difficult man to have as a father. But his son—the narrator of this slim, harrowing novel—is curious about Walter’s experiences during World War II, and so makes him a present of a blank notebook in which to write down his memories. Walter dies, however, leaving nothing but the barest skeleton of a story on those pages, leading his son to fill in the gaps himself, rightly or wrongly, with what he can piece together of his father’s early life.
This, then, is the story of Walter and his dangerously outspoken friend Friedrich Caroli, seventeen-year-old trainee milkers on a dairy farm in northern Germany who are tricked into volunteering for the army during the spring of 1945: the last, and in many ways the worst, months of the war. The men are driven to the point of madness by what they experience, and when Friedrich finally deserts his post, Walter is forced to do the unthinkable.
Told in a remarkable impressionistic voice, focusing on the tiny details and moments of grotesque beauty that flower even in the most desperate situations, Ralf Rothmann’s To Die in Spring “ushers in the post–[Günter] Grass era with enormous power” (Die Zeit).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This brilliant novel from German author Rothmann (Knife Edge) follows Walter Urban and his close friend Friedrich, two adolescent dairy farm workers in northern Germany, during the waning months of World War II. While out drinking at a local beer hall, they were coerced into enlisting in the German army by SS officers. The unnamed narrator, Walter's son, pieces together his father's wartime experience in the present day, after Walter's death, by constructing the few factual details available to him into a vivid narrative that reveals the horrors of war and a traumatic event that changed Walter's life. Spare and elegant, the novel paints a quietly harrowing picture of the lasting effects of human violence and offers brief, poignant glimpses into the natural world (especially when members of the animal kingdom wander unknowingly into the war zone). Directly confronting issues of responsibility, accountability, and legacy, this is an undeniably powerful work.
Customer Reviews
Beautifully compact
Excellent translation.