The Dark Room

by Rachel Seiffert

Nominated by:

• Universitats-und Landesbibliothek Bonn, Bonn, Germany
  
• Waterford County Library, Waterford, Ireland

Publisher of Nominated Edition: Heinemann ISBN 0434009865

Photographs and photography loom large in this novel about Germany's Nazi past - the dark room as it were. There are three separate narratives tracing the emerging consciousness for Germans of what Nazism actually represented. In the first section, Helmut, a young disabled man, unfit for military service, finds fulfillment in photography and is unquestioning in his support for the regime. In the next section, we meet a young family of five children as the war draws to a close. Their parents are prominent Nazi activists likely to be arrested by the advancing Americans and the children, led by Hannelore, the eldest girl, travel mostly on foot from Bavaria to their grandmother in Hamburg, mingling along the way with hordes of people then on the move in Germany at the end of the war. Hannelore becomes dimly aware that there is something shameful, best hidden, about her parents and destroys photographs to prevent identification. The final and most complex section is set in the 1990s with Michael, a young teacher, trying to face up to the fact that his grandfather, an SS officer on the eastern front, was probably a war criminal. Could the man in the photograph be guilty of murdering Jews.

The style in the first twos sections is spare, telling in a matter-of-fact way a story essentially of survival. The final section is much more introspective with Michael fearfully peeling back the layers of family history afraid of what he might find.

This is a thoughtful utterly compelling book which would be on my IMPAC Dublin shortlist.

Raheny Library Readers' Group Member