The Sins of the Father
Will be published approx. on 18. January 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-908251-02-2 (ISBN)
Description
A Nazi war criminal's son and a Holocaust survivor's daughter decide to get married in the pleasant, middle-class conformity of sixties Argentina. When the two families come together, Becky's blind father recognises the voice of the former SS officer, and sets off a chain of events that to varying degrees damage everyone at that meeting. Franz has to discover the real past of his rather distant father, who is kidnapped by Mossad agents and taken to Israel for trial. The action shifts to that country, and then to England. Allan Massie uses this drama to explore a wealth of ideas concerning such themes as guilt, retribution, identity, power, political motivation, memory and above all, as the title implies, the effects of brutal conflicts and war crimes on the following generation. Massie does not dwell on the savagery of the crimes, but forensically analyses the scar they leave in history, suggesting that, post Holocaust, we inhabit a different moral world - a world in which we can no longer ignore the enormity of the crimes of which we are capable.
Reviews / Votes
'[Sins of the Father] has a sombre intelligence rare in current fiction ... Allan Massie treats evanescent joys and enduring, terrible questions with a patient art that begins to feel like life' The Independent 'The ingenious and understated manner in which Massie treats the unforgotten and unforgiving makes this a tense and credible work' The Times 'Challenges easy assumptions and skilfully explores complex moral dilemmas' The Daily Telegraph 'This is a novel of ideas; not a twentieth-century one topped off with rereferences to sub-atomic physics, but a nineteenth-century novel of moral idea' Independent on SundayMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Isle of Lewis
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 208 mm
Width: 137 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
431 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-908251-02-2 (9781908251022)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Allan Massie, one of Scotland's foremost literary figures, was born in Singapore in 1938, grew up in Aberdeenshire and read history at Cambridge. He has published 23 works of fiction and nine of non-fiction, which include a string of highly successful historical novels. Perhaps his most masterly works are those set in contemporary society, which confront a wide range of difficult moral problems: The Death of Men, A Question of Loyalties (winner of the 1989 Saltire Society Book of the Year Award), Shadows of Empire, Surviving and, of course, The Sins of the Father. He is also one of Scotland's most respected political commentators and a prolific journalist whose book reviews always reflect his deep understanding of the art of writing.