My Germany
A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped
Will be published approx. on 30. January 2009
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-0-299-23150-7 (ISBN)
Description
The son of Holocaust survivors journeys to a poisoned land in this memoir about shaking off family ghosts. Lev Raphael grew up loathing everything German. A son of Holocaust survivors, haunted by his parents' suffering and traumatic losses under Nazi rule, he was certain that Germany was one place in the world he would never visit. Those feelings shaped his Jewish and gay identity, his life, and his career. Then the barriers of a lifetime began to come down, as revealed in this moving memoir. After his mother's death, while researching her war years, Raphael found a distant relative living in the very city where she had been a slave laborer. What would he learn if he actually traveled to the place where his mother had found freedom and met his father? Not long after that epochal trip, a German publisher bought several of his books for translation. Raphael was launched on book tours in Germany, discovering not so much a new Germany, but a new self: someone unafraid to face the past and transcend it.
Reviews / Votes
Lev Raphael writes with the precision of a neurosurgeon, the warmth of an ancient storyteller, and the soul of a people that has known the extremes of joy and sorrow, hope and despair, love and hate more than almost any other. - The Jewish Bulletin, San Francisco ""Stunning and powerful.... Lev Raphael's memoir is a superb work combining intellectual rigor with emotional honesty in exploring his three-fold identity as a son of Holocaust survivors, a Jew, and a gay man."" - Alan L. Berger, Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies, Florida Atlantic University ""Part travelogue and part detective story, My Germany is a wholly enthralling, beautifully written story of healing and forgiveness."" - Lynne Olson, author of Troublesome Young MenMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Wisconsin
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
15 b/w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
459 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-299-23150-7 (9780299231507)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Lev Raphael has spoken about his work on three continents and has been publishing fiction and prose about the Second Generation for over thirty years - longer than any other American author. His nineteen books include The German Money, Writing a Jewish Life, and Dancing on Tisha B'Av. He lives in Okemos, Michigan.