Author(s): Philip Temple

NZ Fiction

Most novels about the Nazi period portray Germans as the perpetrators of war and genocide. This work provides an authentic insight into how ordinary Germans - distinguished only by their artistic skill - suffered under Nazi rule and the catastrophe of war. Vividly told and deeply moving, it tells of one woman's struggle to survive.Based on letters, documents, interviews and on-the-ground research in Germany and Poland, the novel follows a young aspiring writer, Maria Scholz, from the time she arrives in Berlin in 1933 and meets sculptor Hermann Blumenthal. They were to become key members of a community of artists at the heart of Hitler's Berlin, part of an inner circle passively opposed to the Nazi regime and who were persecuted or declared 'degenerate'. Philip Temple's gripping narrative describes how they tried to keep alive free-spirited creativity, and the values of a universal humanity, amid the growing terror of a police state, and it explores the tragedy that befell Maria as war brought the firebombing of Berlin and the Russian invasion.