The House by the Lake - Softcover

Harding, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 043402323X ISBN 13: 9780434023233

Publisher: William Heinemann, 2015

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2015
'A passionate memoir about Germany' Neil MacGregor

'History at its most alive' A. D. Miller

'Superb... a remarkable book' Tom Holland

'A book that will stay with me for a very long time' Rachel Joyce
In the summer of 1993, Thomas Harding travelled to Berlin with his grandmother to visit a small house by a lake. It was her ‘soul place’ she said – a sanctuary she had been forced to leave when the Nazis swept to power. The trip was a chance to see the house one last time, to remember it as it was. But the house had changed.

Twenty years later Thomas returned to Berlin. The house now stood empty, derelict, and soon to be demolished. A concrete footpath cut through the garden, marking where the Berlin Wall had stood for nearly three decades. Elsewhere were signs of what the house had once been – blue tiles showing behind wallpaper, phographs fallen between floorboards, flagstones covered in dirt. Evidence of five families who had made the house their home over a tumultuous century.

The House by the Lake is a groundbreaking work of history, revealing the story of Germany through the inhabitants of one small wooden building: a nobleman farmer, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned Nazi composer, a widow and her children, a Stasi informant. Moving from the late nineteenth century to the present day, from the devastation of two world wars to the dividing and reuniting of a nation, it is a story of domestic joy and contentment, of terrible grief and tragedy, and of a hatred handed down through the generations. Breathtaking in scope, intimate in detail, it is the long-awaited new history from the author of the bestselling Hanns and Rudolf.

About this title

Review:

"A passionate memoir about Germany." (Neil MacGregor, author of A History of the World in 100 Objects and Germany: Memories of a Nation)

"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)

"In The House by the Lake, the simple villa loved and lost by Thomas Harding's family magically becomes the setting for the great clashes of the twentieth century, and for a technicolour cast – victims, villains and ordinary compromisers – struggling not to be crushed by them. Personal and panoramic, heart-wrenching yet uplifting, this is history at its most alive." (A. D. Miller, bestselling author of Snowdrops and The Faithful Couple)

"I loved this book. I admire the elegance of it, the hope, the honesty and the generousness with which every resident is given his or her place. It has made me think about our individual parts in the bigger story, and the coming and going-ness of things. It is a book that will stay with me for a very long time." (Rachel Joyce)

"Diamond brilliant... the history of modern Germany as seen through the windows of the wooden house beside the lake. This is an extraordinary book." (John Lewis-Stempel Sunday Express)

Book Description:

A personal and panoramic new history of Germany in the twentieth century by the author of Hanns and Rudolf

About this edition

• Publisher: William Heinemann
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 043402323X
• ISBN 13: 9780434023233
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464