A name is not much, but sometimes it’s all we have.
In this book, Rabea Edel tells the moving story of her mother and paints a portrait of an entire postwar generation growing up in the shadow of violence and a veil of silence.
This is a novel about the power of love and the search for truth.
Raisa lives alone with her mother Martha, and always has done. She has no memory of her father. Her name is the one thing she got from him – and it’s for the best, says Martha. But Raisa starts asking questions. When their neighbour, a boy called Mat, disappears, Martha finally starts talking. About her grandmother Dina. About lies that protect and lies that endanger. About the love of her life, and about her greatest loss.
One fateful night during the last days of the Second World War links Martha’s family with Jakob, a local Jewish child who was always having to disappear behind new identities in order to survive. Sixty years on, Martha and Jakob both attempt to reclaim their own history through telling their stories.
A novel about family which spans the 1920s, the American occupation in Bremerhaven, a 1980s childhood, and present-day New York. A book that is like a kaleidoscope, focusing mainly on women – and on women’s ability to constantly reinvent themselves.